Halloween: Jaded Mom Recap

Non-scary Children of the Corn

Stephen King eat your heart out

When the boys were little, I was a bit crazy about Halloween. I took them to ten different parties in October and multiple pumpkin patches. I loved the cuteness they oozed out of their costumes. Maybe it's the fact that they don't wear cute costumes anymore (no more pandas or Tigger), but I'm definitely over Halloween. We did go to our first legit corn maze, making the trek to Dublin with out community group. It was hot, it was long, it had trivia questions that told you which way to go. E and I went back to the car after the first half. There was also a corn box (instead of a sand box) at the corn maze pumpkin patch. The kids loved it. I immediately thought,  "This is why the rest of the world hates the U.S." People are starving and we are wasting bushels of corn for the amusement of our children. They were also charging $$ for the opportunity to shoot ears of corn as part of target practice. All the endless talk about the drought, yet we don't flinch when food that was made possible by the use of the precious liquid is used as entertainment rather than as sustenance. Of course, I'm as guilty as the next person since I was there!

I missed the Halloween carnival at their elementary school because I just happened to have a lunch appointment at Chez Panisse that day. Even if it had been at Jack in the Box, I think I would have picked the lunch over the carnival. Apparently, it turns perfectly normal girls into zombies. And out of all the activities at the carnival, their favorite was "eating chips." Parents and high-schoolers spent three hours setting up the carnival, putting up games and decorations all over the multi-purpose room. The boys and I were there for an hour before I had to leave for Berkeley stretching out cotton to resemble cobwebs and hanging it on the walls. So much effort for a four hour event, what if all those volunteers had instead picked up the garbage in the school playground and fields? A better use of time and volunteer manpower but not quite as fun for the [young] adults channeling their inner Chucky.

The kids (and E and I) paraded around the school on Halloween in the rain. E had protested her original costume (Snow White) to join the army of Stepford Elsas. I ordered it off eBay and we had received it well in advance of the big day. The weather on Halloween morning, however, required E to take off her Elsa costume since it would have dragged in the rain. Instead she was very practical and put on a hoodie sweatshirt to protect her head. I couldn't understand why the school didn't just cancel the parade. I never had Halloween parades at any of my five elementary schools in Chicago. It may have been too cold on Halloween to do so; coats would have hid our costumes and defeated the entire point.

Halloween night was pretty uneventful. We went down the street instead of roaming the hills near my mother in law's house as we had done in past years, seeking out the neighbors known for giving full size treats. Sanity for the full-time working mom won out over the Hostess cupcakes and Costco size chocolate bars. They went through a decent number of houses and got a decent amount of candy (which will be going straight into the Operation Christmas Child boxes). Halloween, done. Does anyone need an Elsa costume?