Coronavirus Halloween

Minus the actual trick-or-treating, Halloween was pretty normal! 😆

A mom podcast I listen to suggested thinking through all your holiday traditions, evaluating risk for each tradition, and deciding which ones you can still do and which one you need to table for this year.  This was helpful to think through our fall plans, and I will be doing it for all the holidays and birthdays coming up in the next six weeks.

Most of what we do for Halloween was easily doable.  We have our pumpkin patch where we always go to get our carving pumpkins.  In every year, I love this patch because it's not overly commercialized with kiddie rides and games.  It's simple.  You go and pick a pumpkin, either from the barn already picked, or take a walk out in the field behind the barn and find one for yourself.  Every year, we avoid weekend crowds, and with the kids having less structured days it was easy to pick a nice weather afternoon during the week to keep this tradition.

We also usually make our own costumes.  This was also still doable.   Lydia and Brett love craft projects, and Reggie tolerates them. Brett had his mind made up from the start that he wanted to be "Metal Sonic". I let him take the lead and tried to keep it simple.  

Lydia did a little Pinteresting and decided she'd be a cactus.  Her costume was easy, but I really annoyed her that I made her hand sew instead of hot glue the cactus spines on her shirt.  I wanted her to get some more wear out of the shirt after Halloween!

Reggie had an idea of what he wanted to do after some online searching and knowing how quickly he loses his patience with diy projects, we found most of what we needed at the party store.

Then there was the pumpkin carving.  This year, we kicked it up a notch and watched some Youtube videos for ideas first. (Also because we had more time!)

We avoided costume parties, trunk-or-treat events, trick-or-treating and passing out candy.  Obviously, the whole point of Halloween for kids is getting loads of candy.  So I bought a ton of candy and treats.  On Halloween, we had a household-only party with our traditional "spooky foods" menus.

But also some silly games.

And a "graveyard hunt" where the kids took their trick-or-treat bags and flashlights for an after-dark candy collection.

We finished the night with a sleepover in the living room and spooky movies!