So I guess a Halloween post is due! I had a blast with the kiddos yesterday trick or treating on base. But WOW. The amount of people flooding base housing was insane! We heard candy goes fast, so we tried to get there early, but it was not early enough, apparently!
Germans don’t celebrate Halloween, but they do recognize All Saint’s Day as a holiday (Nov. 1st). Towns more heavily populated with Americans do celebrate some, but it just depends on the town. So most Americans off base travel on for trick or treating festivities. I thought a lot of people came to Okinawa. HA! That was nothin!
Last year I kinda sorta made this deal with myself (cause my son could really care less) that my son and I would make his costume each year for Halloween. And last year’s was AWESOME. Well, this year he decided to be a Creeper from Minecraft. Here is what they look like on the video game (I sometimes forget not everyone is down with the kids):
I had big plans of getting this done well in advance because I knew time was already an enemy of mine. HA…screw plans! The enemy crept up (haha…see what I did there) and threw my plans in the garbage. So kiddo and I stayed up late the night before to magically turn a box into a Creeper.
We bought the official Creeper head online (I can only deal with one box, people…two boxes is just too much). The only problem with doing that is that the green colors did not really match up. In the light it honestly looked horrible. LOL. However, the sun went down pretty quickly after we arrived on base and then you couldn’t tell the difference. I literally had to tape him into the box when we got there. I was hoping to God he didn’t have to go #1 after we began walking because that would’ve been the end of it. Thankfully we did not need to borrow a stranger’s bathroom (like my friend did…shout out, Danielle! She’s gonna kill me.).
His costume was a huge hit with everyone we passed! We kept hearing things like, “CREEPER!!!” “Oh my gosh, it’s a Creeper! Get away!” Those comments slapped a huge missing tooth grin on my son’s face. I have to say that watching him try to step up onto curbs in that box and turn around to see where I was was quite amusing. I sure do love that kid.
Little bitty man went as a lion, which almost did not happen. I had ordered a flipping cool lion costume from Amazon, then noticed the shipping date was November 7th. So I cancelled, but by then it was too late to order something else. Thankfully there was one in his size on the yard sales page! It was so cold that he had his long underwear and his snowsuit on under the thick lion costume! And I couldn’t get him strapped into the stroller because I couldn’t figure out how to get the dang straps loosened! He sat pretty snug, though, so I just put the straps around his arms. Mother of the year award, I know.
He wanted to walk EVERYWHERE. Which is kind of hard when you have a stroller and a huge green box to follow around. But we managed. His face had a nice little dance with the pavement causing a HUGE knot on his forehead, and he lost a pacifier somewhere along the way, but he had a good time. I LOVE MY BOYS!
In school we don’t celebrate Halloween per se, but we do a ton with pumpkins! I love this time of year and this entire unit…and so do my students! We estimate and measure the pumpkins’ heights and weights, compare their sizes, explore density by seeing if they sink or float, learn the life cycle and observe germination by measuring pumpkin sprout growth, and dress them up like literary characters! It’s tons of fun! I think the pictures speak for themselves:
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