So the French don't really 'do' Halloween - not surprising, really, the crazy consumer abundance of trick-or-treating definitely feels like a North American invention - so there was no halloween decorations, no dressing up for school, and definitely no door-to-door candy collection. This came as a big disappointment to the girls who had been talking about their costumes for this Halloween since last Halloween. And the 31st also fell right in the middle of the Toussaint holidays - All Saints, of course.
Thankfully, Leslie came to the rescue with a Halloween party, with costumes, games, a haunted house, and we even managed a little trick-or-treating between our four houses.
The definite highlight was the decorated haunted house with Toby's sister Sophie as the wicked witch (she embraced the role! She was fabulous), cousin Ruby did all the face-painting, and I equipped Sophie with lots of 'dead body parts' for the kids to touch in the darkness - peeled frozen grapes for eyeballs, cold oiled spaghetti for intestines, chopped tomatoes for brains, a prune for an ear (supposedly one of the most successful, after the grapes), a pickle for a nose etc. Although she did have to tone the act down a bit after Zoe burst into tears (but I think that was just a testament to her powerful performance...).
'I want to show you what happened to the last little child who came inside...'
Toby also set up a game where apples, cookies and peeled garlic hung on string and the teams had to get as many bites as possible without using their hands. Extra points for eating the garlic!
Finally, in our game of ghoulish British Bulldog Toby met with a dreadful accident when he ran into a tree. Blood EVERYWHERE. (He quickly hid the ketchup bottle.) The funniest part was how little the kids reacted to his screams and moans and all the blood - lots of standing around, looking pretty unconcerned. Remind me not to rely on them in an emergency.
So it was a pretty fab Halloween celebration after all.
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