Halloween 1

This is being posted extremely late. Sorry.

The Sunday before Halloween we went to a Halloween carnival at the local rec center. Frances went as a butterfly and Johann was a robot. Arial made a pretty skirt thing for the torso of Frances' costume. With wings and antennae, she looked very cute.

I had a hand in Johann's costume. We spray painted some boxes silver and then I hot-glued on various electronic components. It looked pretty cool although there were some issues. His mobility was hindered because the torso was a little too long. Even more worrisome was that the helmet was relatively heavy and we had a tough time keeping it on his head (it was a box that was way bigger than his head, it fit more like a space helmet than a hat). We wound up using little sticky Velcro tabs to attach it to the torso.

Before the carnival, there is a "parade" where the kids walk to the carnival. We thought that would be fun. What we didn't think of was the wind.

We parked at the start of the parade (about a quarter mile from the rec center) and got the kids into their costumes. People seemed to like Johann's costume even though he could barely walk. The parade started (going in the opposite direction as the rec center). Johann and I quickly fell behind but soon Arial and Frances came back to us and declared it too windy to do a parade.

Arial suggested we take the kids out of their costumes and drive to the rec center. I stupidly said that we should just walk. It didn't seem that far but what I didn't count on was the wind.

Like I mentioned before, Johann couldn't walk very fast and the wind was quite cold. I needed to pick Johann up and carry him but there was really no place to grab him with his costume in the way.

I gave the helmet to Arial and the fan on the back promptly broke off (a sign of things to come). Then, I scooped Johann up and lay him across my arms. That began a long, cold, tiring journey to the rec center.

I had given him my stocking cap since he didn't have his helmet to keep warm. It managed to blow off his head. Arial had to come back and get it. From then on Johann was concerned that the wind would blow off his hat.

We finally got to the rec center. Some of the electronics were coming off but nothing too bad. However one of the shoulder straps was broken and the glue on the Velcro sticky tabs pulled off. I think that caused by a combination of the cold affecting the glue and spray-paint separating from the cardboard.

After finally getting in and giving up on the helmet (which didn't have anything holding it on his head since the Velcro fell off) we went into the carnival.

They had a bunch of stations where the kids would do something like "pin the nose on the felt jack-o-lantern" and then get a small prize. Both kids had fun with that although Johann seemed a bit bewildered when some stranger put a blindfold on him and spun him around.

They both enjoyed the ball throwing events while the "fishing" (put a string over a divider and someone clips candy to it) is always a bit strange.

Eventually, Johann became really tired and tired of having his mobility hampered. So, we took him out of his costume. I took it back to the car and the wind threatened to tear it apart even more. Stupid wind.

Arial and I didn't really have that great of a time because we were kicking ourselves for trying to do the parade. But I think the kids had fun (or at least an experience), so I guess it was worth it.

We needed to make major costume modifications before trick or treating.

mwz