Halloween Hijinks in the Cotswolds

TLDR: Great Halloween, tiny people were cute, sugar was ingested in heroic quantities

The Prep:

Ollie began the week rather joyfully crowing that it was Halloween soon. Somehow, he has decided that Halloween is something exciting and that he should probably be allowed a party as part of it. Given that Pose and I feel a vague, ephemeral parental guilt at times, we caved; so began a Herculean cleaning regime to get the house vaguely presentable for today. Inevitably, it did degenerate into dumping vast quantities of stuff into the spare room.

Either way, once the house was presentable and no easily identifiable marks we’re too present we set about prepping the party. Surprisingly it really didn’t take too long and Ollie was even vaguely helpful cutting out bat shapes etc. We did a real Pinterest kiddie spread and it all turned out well(ish). The only major fail was trying to make some sweet/popcorn stuffed gloves – it didn’t even get close to succeeding. The best way of describing the results would be plasticy-smelling, misshapen surgical gloves of disappointment. A real higlight of the prep stage, was Rosie furiously drawing – with tongue sticking out in concentration – faces on tangerines with a Sharpie at 11pm on Wednesday night. Every so often I’d get excitedly called in from the kitchen to see her latest favourite face. This technique for keeping Pose entertained has now been filed for reuse at a later date.

Anyway, after finally getting everything ready the night before, the party day arrived and Ollie was massively excited. He was kind enough to not wake us until 5.30am – no sarcasm intended here this felt like a lie in. He was also helpful and fairly delightful in helping us decorate and prep throughout the morning. Given that Pose and I were busy the whole morning he was great. He sat staring at all the food for most of the morning in a remarkably well behaved manner. He explained quite succinctly that he was just looking after it until his friends arrived. He’s pretty good at times. I only caught him sneaking bits off the table 5-6 times. As I’d estimated double that would occur, it was a pleasant surprise.

The party:

When Ollie’s little friends arrived it was frankly one of the cuter things I’d seen as each one trooped in wearing little fancy dress ensembles. Ollie excitedly greeted everyone at the door with a roar (he was a dragon) and a demand they press the novelty bell we had on the door. Then once they had all arrived, it settled into toddlers playing (rather nicely I must say) and grazing on all the food. Occasional breaks occured for demands of cake/sweets before savoury food. There was also the inevitable log jam moments with the toilets, as all toddlers magically develop the need to go at exactly the same time. Ollie also went for a costume changing spree appearing at various points in the proceedings as an ice dragon, a green dragon, a spider and an Ollie.

I won’t lie, we did callously provide vast amounts of sugar laden treats, safe in the knowledge that only one of the soon to be hyper munchkins would be ours to peel of the ceiling. To add to the silly amounts of sugar available, we gave the tiny ones a wooden sword and a pumpkin pinnata to hack at. The sweets inside this, although identical to the ones on the table, we’re infinetly more desirable and thus battle commenced between the tiny ones and the pinnata. Long story short the pumpkin lost. Rosie, who was holding the pinnata in lieu of us having a place to hang it, remarkably didn’t get hit either.

Either way the party wound down and people left in varying degrees of sugar mania. Ollie crashed into oblivion a solid 3 minutes after the last person left.

Trick or treating:

The village where we live really does go all out for Halloween and loads of houses decorate and hand out sweets etc. It’s pretty ace to be honest. With this in mind Pose had arranged for us to catch up again with the party goers for some trick or treating in the evening.

The cuteness of the party earlier was instantly shoved into second place by just how sickeningly cute and picture perfect trick or treating was with a gaggle of 2/3 year olds. Honestly seeing them bustle up to a door together, vaguely remember to shout trick or treat, then snaffle sweets into buckets was just too much. The fact that they all seemingly remembered to say thank you in the midst of all this was a minor miracle. However, given that a group of anxious parents were closely trailing, constantly reminding them to say thank you (Pose and I included), probably helped.

That’s pretty much how the day went. Ollie had an amazing time and went to bed without even a hint of argument. I think the second sugar crash of the day was quite thorough. Pose and I will not be far behind as enjoying yourself, 3 year old style, is frankly exhausting.