Costume Parties And Sugar Highs

On Saturday the children attended a Halloween-themed birthday party of one of their Montessori school classmates.

I've come to realize that I'm kind of thrifty. Can you believe I picked up these cute costumes over the summer at garage sales (probably the only two I visited during the summer)? I got Alexander's Winnie The Pooh outfit for $2 and Anna's Princess Ariel costume for 75 cents (wand and tiara/earrings were from her birthday). And they were perfect fits!

The hostess went all out. She organized a lot of games, had tons of food, including candy and otherwise sugary treats (more on that in a bit), punch with fun spooky-shaped ice cubes, ghostly treat bags, etc.

Among these photos are the children posing at our home before the party, playing outside, playing a Halloween Bingo game with candy corn, pinning crazy eyes on a creepy character, mummifying a friend with toilet paper, stringing and then eating candy jewelry, getting a ride on birthday friend's motorized Jeep and gathering around for the pinata. I've also included a little video of one of the games. By the way, did you know that you can click (or maybe double click, depending on your computer) on each picture to view it a little larger?

The party ran over (more like three hours instead of two), and that's with the mom skipping a couple of games! By the time we left, the children were not acting their finest. But I can say that everyone was a bit on the cranky and/or sugared-up or otherwise overstimulated side by this time.

One of my rules is: "When it's time to go, it's time to go." The children know this but were not abiding by it, as they were too busy climbing aboard the boy's Jeep for the umpteenth time. So I turned my back and was going to put our stuff in the car before going back to physically retrieve the children. Before I could open the car door both children came running down the hill in a frenzy (I guess they thought I might actually leave them). Anna was screaming rudely at the top of her lungs, "Don't you ever leave me!" Then, when she got in the car she screamed again at the top of her lungs, "It's hot in here!"

Needless to say, she was grounded when she got home. (We've found that grounding Anna to her room is pretty effective.) After nap time and a subsequent grounding, she was allowed to play outside. When she came down she said to me without any prompting, "Sorry for screaming earlier, mommy."

This morning, on our way home from church we talked about how we should write a nice thank-you card to their friend and his mommy and daddy for inviting us to the party and for all the fun games and decorations and treats and yummy food they had. Then, Anna said, "Mom, too much candy can make me get in trouble."