I'm not much for celebrating Halloween. It's a take it or leave it holiday for me. The thought of making my kids wear costumes when they don't really like dressing up, letting them see lots of stuff that's scary, and teaching them to take hoards of candy from perfect strangers isn't really part of my development plan for them.
But this year we were invited to a party in a part of Singapore called the Woodlands. It's where the American school is located so there are loads of expats there. We were told it's something you have to experience at least once. My kids have found costumes they did want to wear of their own will, so we gave it a shot.
Ethan was Batman and Megan was either Mrs. Incredible or Violet Incredible - she looks more like Mrs. Incredible with her red hair. I tried to convince her that she would like to wear the fairy princess costume we already owned, but she insisted on the Incredibles so I ran over to the Deepavali tent today and bought her a cheap one. She loved it. She was quite proud (pictures to prove it coming soon).
We had pizza at our friend's house and headed out. It wasn't bad at first, with more of the younger kids out. By 7 p.m. (we started at 6) the older kids were out without their manners (forgot those at home I guess) and our kids were getting bowled over. Ethan started asking how many more houses we had to go to, which was my first clue that it was time to go. Erik was going to come pick us up, but it was nearly impossible to drive in. I had to call a taxi. He hadn't heard of Halloween so it all seemed quite bizarre to him. He asked, "Can everyone go to any house?"
"Can!" I replied (how very Singaporean of me).
I asked Ethan if he had fun. He said no, then qualified it with, "It was fun until the end." Erik and I already sorted through the candy, threw away the worthless stuff, and kept a few choice goodies for ourselves. Did our parents do that to ours?
Winding Down
12 years ago
2 comments:
A big tootsie roll, a mini Milky Way, a mini Toblerone, a mini white Crunch bar, and a mini ten thousand grand. Erik took the atomic fire balls, because the kids wouldn't eat them anyway.
Believe me, there's plenty left for them. I imagine I'll still be throwing a lot of it away in the end.
Funny! My sister used to play this quirky game with me and my halloween candy. She was the "candy machine". She would lay on the floor with her mouth open and my job was to try to drop the candy into her mouth. She would make funny noises as she caught the candy in her mouth. I wasn't bright enough to figure out that it was MY candy that I was dropping. . . and that she was using her game to steal all of my candy from me. Oh, well. .. I was cavity free growing up... but she wasn't. :)
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