this is halloween

This week was Halloween!

Pretty much everything we did this week was dedicated to Halloween.

We made a paper mache' spider - twice. The first time, we'd made it with the balloons and did two layers of paper mache - and I got the brilliant idea to put it in the dehydrator to dry. We learned that if a certain Mama forgets to turn the temperature down enough, the balloons pop rip the paper mache.

We tried to repair it by adding more paper mache' and while we were at it, we made a second, smaller spider (I felt the first one was too large for our web). And THEN we learned that adding wet paper mache' to a dry paper mache' object with no supporting frame only causes what's dry to get wet, and the whole rest of it to fold and crumple in on itself.

But luckily we'd made that second spider! When it was dry on its own, Kiernen painted it black (I helped a bit) and we added (as per Kiernen's instructions), three eyes to its face, and another three to its bum. Then a red eyebrow and a blue eyebrow, and of course the legs and red markings on its back. Spooky!

We also decorated our common house for a Halloween party we had, and made games to play - Kiernen helped decorate the pins for the pumpkin bowling game (played with yes, a small pumpkin). We added beans to the bottom of the bottles (these were made with recycled plastic water bottles) to weigh them just a bit, so they'd stand well on their own. The kids LOVED this game at the party.

Kiernen also got to trade his candy at the end of trick-or-treating for a gift - and his gift was the Lego Star Wars Visual Dictionary, and of course, a small Lego kit - a clone walker set. He was delighted with this - who needs candy when there is Lego to be had? 



Earlier this week, we began getting egg deliveries - I'd found a woman on Craigslist who had free-range organic chickens and was selling the eggs. I called and asked if she could deliver, and she said yes, and also meet the order demand of our community. (37 dozen all told). She said yes, and now she is coming every Monday morning to deliver us our eggs. Kiernen and I decided to deliver the eggs to our neighbours, so we got a glass jar for the money, a pad to mark off who'd gotten their eggs and paid, and of course the cart, and we went around delivering the eggs to our neighbours who were home at the time. 

This led to us spending the day with one of our neighbours, Kiernen's favourite adult in the world ("I even love her more than you, Mama." Her name is Gillian, and she is wonderful with Kiernen - she plays with him and treats him with love and respect and she is just so relaxing and nonjudgmental and easy to be around. I love her, too. So she invited us into her home, and we had tea and played cooperative games (and I thought, this SO counts as learning! lol). 

We played one where you had to work together to get a dog's toys back home before the bad critters got them (raccoons, a snake, and I've forgotten the other one) - so it uses strategy and critical thinking to figure out how to move the pieces around so you can get the dog's toys home. 

Then Kiernen and Gillian played with Gillian's dollhouse together - they arranged the furniture and decided where to put everything, and they of course played with the people while they were at it, farting and burping on each other the whole time, because THAT is humour around here for ALL the kids these days (Bodily functions! Hilarity ensues!). 

Still at Gillian's house, we shared stories of family histories and when we were little, as Kiernen LOVES to do. 

At home, we played with our own kitchen scale - a neighbour had used it to weigh some nuts for a recipe, and Kiernen was curious about it, so we used it to weigh different items around our house: the bike lock, a package of water balloons, his play laptop (too heavy). 

Oh, I almost forgot to say! On Saturday night, we went to Vancouver and walked with our friends (Gillian included) in the Parade of Souls. It was our first time ever going, and I have to say, I for one was in my happy place - all people in costumes, all enthusiastic about being so, all amazingly creative. We haven't spent much time in Vancouver itself, but wow oh wow, did that ever make me blissed out. 

Kiernen had a good time, too - we left when he was finished, our grand finale being the zombies dancing to "Thriller", which truly, on Halloween, you could NOT ask for a more perfect performance. And we got to walk behind Jack Skellington in the parade, which made Kiernen immensely happy - and Jack was quite friendly and fine with Kiernen being so smitten with him (when we'd lose sight of Jack, Kiernen would ask where he was). We told him Kiernen had watched the movie several times, and he leaned down so Kiernen could touch his head, and Kiernen was delighted.
Needless to say (yet I will), we will be attending the Parade of Souls as long as we remain in Vancouver, because that was SO. MUCH. FUN!

Sadly, I didn't take my camera, because I figured it would be too much to manage with all of the people and holding Kiernen's hand (and jacket, as it happened). It turned out that Gillian was the one holding his hand, but still, I do think that stopping to take photos would have been a bit of an effort. Perhaps next year, because there were so many amazing costumes! And houses! And performers!