Halloween party

Last night, in the 2nd part of our 2nd day of birthday celebrating, we attended a YMCA Halloween Party as the guest of an employee (which happens to be my sister!). The kids got to dress up in costume and trick or treat with costumed Y employees, and all sorts of activities and games were set up for them to participate in. It was a bunch of fun!

J (aka Superman, minus the cape for this particular activity) got to try his hand at rock-climbing on a "real" rock wall (as opposed to the little ones they have at playgrounds), supervised by his uncle. He didn't make it too far up before getting a little scared, but my guess is the next time (and we're invited to join them for one of their weekly family rock-climbing times!) he'll climb even further. The Map Man did his first climb as well, but Zoo Boy chose to eat a lollipop instead, and I opted out due to the long line of kids waiting for a turn. Next time! It's something I'd really like to try.

Zoo Boy (aka the astronaut) plays Foosball with his aunt. Other Halloween activities we participated in (but were too dark to get any photos of) were Spooky Soccer (the kids ran around in the dark with glow necklaces around their necks and strobe lights flashing, trying to push an oversize soccer ball into a spookily-lit net), Carnival Games (my boys watched while their cousins ate donuts off of a string suspended from above, no hands allowed!), The Monster Mash Dance Party (dancing to every one's favorite Halloween song in a gym with lots of large exercise balls to bounce around and on), and the Spooky Swamp, which was a boat ride around the darkened pool, towed by a lifeguard through icky things suspended above them, and with costumed "monsters" popping up out of the water to scare them.

J tries his had at another kind of pool, which he liked a lot better than that Swamp ride. He really got scared, poor kid. Fortunately he was sharing a boat with one of his cousins who is a few years older than him and helped him cope with it. But I'm guessing it'll be quite some time to convince him to get into a boat in a dark pool again. (Then again, how often in life does that actually happen?) Zoo Boy got scared too, but recovered quickly -- he told me that the monster was scary, but it's just pretend.

Given the boys' reaction to the Swamp ride, we decided they should sit out the Haunted House activity. So they took advantage of the "Popcorn and Movie" activity, where they were handing out popcorn and cotton candy and had the Charlie Brown Halloween movie playing on the big-screen TV, while their uncle and cousin went to check out the Haunted House. The boys hunkered right down to enjoy the show, while I ate the cotton candy and The Map Man ate the popcorn.

Other than the scare, the kids had a great time, and I'm sure will be looking forward to next year's party come Halloween time again. Zoo Boy in particular loved talking to all the costumed people "in character", asking them questions, and asking if he could touch them (I guess to convince himself that it was really just a costume).