Two Saturdays ago, Jacob’s Halloween Party fantasies finally came true. Although given I’m the one that went to two grocery stores plus Target, wait make that three grocery stores, plus Target… and hauled the ice, set-up the taco buffet, lit the charcoal grill, hung the spiderwebs and remembered the trash cans, I’m willing to share the credit 90/10. Jake did help with staircase Danger tape and outdoor spider web hanging with his dad.
The party was a hit. Atticus arrived as an unbelievably threatening robot made of trash can parts and a bucket head. Lightning’s never been so scared. We invited a mix of our next door neighbors and some of the boys’ best school buddies. A bit of Bean Boozled and some competitive chess matches. Princess Leia exclaiming all the food words she knows now: burgers, cheese, apple, broki, cake! We had a dress-up picture station that was a real hoot. I honestly can’t erase the creepy mental image of Nate in a huge witch nose with my red Pulp Fiction wig. We had helium balloon fighting and an unsanctioned water gun battle where I found kids gleefully running around the yard completely soaked, using metal trash can lids as shields. Of course Jacob is reigning over this war having given out his squirt guns and then claiming the hose with a jet nozzle for himself. Fortunately Lycra Halloween costumes dry quickly. I felt like a successful homemaker as I came out of the house with a perfectly folded fluffy pile of beach towels for the knight, Fortnite characters and Cristiano Ronaldo.
The kiddos loved the bobbing for apples station. I was smugly satisfied to see them not only bob for two entire bags of apples, but actually eat them. I then felt less bad when I set-up the cupcake decorating activity.
I’d gone to Michael’s, which I’m loathe to do, and found a pretty decent buffet of cake decorating choices. I got some sugar skeleton heads, gravestones, sprinkles and miniature bloody hatchets. You know me, I’m a real sucker for anything miniature. There was this great pic on the package showing a white frosted cupcake, covered in oozing red icing, with the bloody hatchet on top, angled just so. Darling, right? I had to pass on the severed sugar fingers… maybe next year.
So the kids are crowded around unsupervised as they return to the station hopped-up on sugar and ready to do it all again. I pause the group— wait, did you ask your mom and dad if you’re allowed to have two? The parents throw caution to the wind and gleefully grant their permission, “It’s Halloween! Sugar ‘em up! Why not?!” How many beers have these people drunk? Clearly I’m not the fun mom… well at least not for Ronaldo and the Omega.
Cruz comes up to me, opens his mouth and it’s filled with a chocolatey black mess of bloody cupcake. I see a whole miniature hatchet wedged in there from cheek-to-cheek and I panic a little bit that someone’s going to choke on marginally edible cupcake weapons.
His dad’s just like, “Whatever keeps him quiet.”