Halloween

Emily's Jack-o-lantern

As I think that I have mentioned, Halloween is Emily's favorite holiday, so she was looking forward to it for a long time. On the day before, she designed her pumpkin and I carved it for her. She added the toothpicks, and I think that it turned out pretty well. Also on the day before, her school celebrated and all of their kids wore their costumes to school. Emily decided to be a vampire this year.

Dressing up for school

Finally, the official day arrived and she was curious as to what we were going to do to celebrate because we had told her that there were definitely surprises planned. We started the day with a trip to a local cemetery - an Emily request. It turns out that cemeteries are actually great places to walk around during a pandemic because there is almost no one else around (no one living, anyway). It was a beautiful day and we wandered around, reading tombstones. I think that Emily liked to imagine that she might see a ghost, but no such luck.

Pinata time

After lunch, we surprised Emily with a pinata in the garage. This is also something that she had requested and we were happy to do it. She had a great time whacking it and then ultimately collecting all of the candy that spilled out. After the pinata, we watched a Halloween movie. Emily requested the original 1931 version of Dracula. I had never seen it, and it was about like you would imagine, but she seemed to like it.

Hopped up on sugar

As evening arrived, we surprised Emily with a fully decorated house. Abbie put white lights along the floor, we set up a strobe light and some colored lights. We tried to set up a fog machine, but it didn't work. Oh well. Then we hid candy all over the house to create a candy hunt. Both girls ran around the house, gathering as much candy as they could find given the dark lighting, and then they had a mini dance party before calling it a night. Overall, I think that Emily was reasonably happy with the day.