Jade's Halloween

After we found out children under five were not allowed at the Ocean Park party, I started feeling bad about leaving Jadyn out of all the fun. After all, who else is going to teach her about the wonder that is Halloween (even if I had a bad attitude about this year)?

In the weeks approaching Halloween, I slowly started to include Halloween themed activities and foods. One day while buying vegetables from the local market, I let Jade “pick” a pumpkin to take home to paint.


With the limited resources we brought to the hotel, some purchased origami paper (the only colored paper the stationary store--for lack of a better term--had), and a glue stick, we made some pretty unimpressive crafts. It entertained Jade though, especially on rainy or overcast afternoons, and I guess that’s what counts.

{Witch milk box (though Cody thought it was a haunted house; Jade helped glue and then painted the face, hair and arms on); paper spider (I told Jade to paint a face on the spider, instead she painted a spider); kleenex ghosts (Jade drew the face on); Jade's ghost drawings.}

She learned what bats, ghosts, witches, and pumpkins are and that they are very much correlated with Halloween. Every time she saw one in a store, at someone’s house, or in a movie, she would say, “Look! It’s a __. It’s like Halloween.” She was especially enthusiastic when she spotted a pumpkin somewhere. I thought it was fun she was getting so excited about it.

In the days leading up to Halloween, we started to have themed food. Again with limited resources and hard to find ingredients, we kept it simple. Jade thought it was so fun though. So much so she probably played with it more than ate it.

{Monster heads; chicken "fingers," seasoned potato bats and bones, and batscream.}

{Spider cookies: part craft, part treat. Can you guess which one Jade made?}

{Our traditional Halloween pancakes. Jadyn appreciated them a lot more this year; she just wanted to play with the witch.}

While checking out a nearby mall during one of our afternoon ventures, we perused through H&M (yay for having those in HK!). We spotted some cute butterfly wings and decided that would be a little better than just a tutu. Hence Jade turned into a beautiful butterfly for Halloween.


Perfectly enough, our branch had a Primary activity early in the day on Saturday, so Jade was able to dress up and trick-or-treat, and we were still able to go to the Ocean Park bash in the evening.

{Drawing a spider with Sofia; one of the game rooms; Maleah and Sofia flapping Jade's wings; posing for the costume contest; all the kids at the primary activity--pretty unexpectedly big primary 'eh? (can you spot the butterfly?)}
{Showing off her loot.}

On Sunday we had a Halloween dinner and had our own little family party with games and prizes for Jade. That way I had no guilt about leaving Jade out of the fun on Saturday night.

{Snack-o'-Lantern; pizza mummies (yes, those were made stove top); swamp punch; witchscream}
{Pumpkin Bowling, Pin the Grin on the Jack-o'-Lantern, Ghost Hunt}

Apparently she had enough fun that for days following she would ask, “Let’s play Halloween again? I want Halloween again.” Definitely makes a Halloween-lover’s heart happy.