November 1, 2009

Ah, Halloween. Well, the kids are to that in-between stage. For a couple of years now, Isaak has already said he's "too old" for Halloween and has opted to just stay home and hand out candy. He's been completely happy with that, of course, since he doesn't like candy which makes trick-or-treating kinda senseless. Add to that the fact that he's never really had a core group of buddies to hang out with, so he's just hung at home. My, how things are different this year! Isaak now has this group of buddies that do all the normal meet-at-lunch, hang-out-after-school stuff that kids his age do. Yeah, they are loud and obnoxious, quirky kids, but they're HIS buddies, and that's saying something. I never look a gift horse in the mouth!

As for Maggie, she still wants to trick-or-treat, but she also wanted to have a party. So, I relented. I let them invite who they wanted to, and I prepped and planned a big old shindig at our hours for their friends and a few of mine. Isaak had about 8 friends and Maggie had about 5, plus some parents and my friends with families; totalled more than 30 people. The boys were incredibly loud and rough, but that's what 12-year-old boys are like, I've learned. The girls just huddled up together, which is also what 10-year-old girls do (they don't want to have anything to do with the boys yet). Groups went out trick-or-treating here and there, but mostly there was just loud noise and chaos.

In one room, I darkened the whole room, put black lights, a strobe light, and spooky music in there. I heard lots of "Thriller" going on. In another room, I had 6 covered bowls where they had to stick their hand in and figure out if the stuff was supposed to represent eyes (boiled eggs in jello), brain (steamed cauliflower), guts (spaghetti and sausage), vomit (pumpkin insides), snot (bananas and pudding), or heart (canned whole tomatoes). Lots of disgusting noises in there! There was a table with cookie decorating, but I only think a couple little kids did that. Then, I made a ton of fun, Halloween food, and a couple friend brought some great stuff, too. We watched Coraline (so creepy!). I only had to get after the boys once for going to far when they went out to ding-dong-ditch.

I learned a couple of things that I will improve upon for next year. Young teenage boys are not trustworthy. I heard later that a lot of our handing-out candy went into their own bags. Also with the ding-dong-ditch idea. I know it's normal, and we all did it, but I still need to reign them in a bit. Also, kids don't appreciate the funky foods so much. I won't go to such efforts next year until I just have my friends over. I'll do the fun stuff I know they'll eat, but not some of the other stuff that took lots of time to make but didn't get eaten much. Not worth the effort. Worth a try, though! I also learned that Maggie's friends are sweet, gentle souls, and Isaak's friends are, I say again, loud and obnoxious. I may look at transforming part of the upstairs for just the girls and let the boys have free reign downstairs. We'll see where they all are in a year.

Yes, that means I will do it again. They kids really seemed to love it. Maggie was so excited, I thought she'd pee herself for days leading up to it. Isaak is just so laid back and content, he would probably be happy with anything, but I sure love to see him having real friends. It's really amazing to me.