Stuff In My Brain: Ghosts In The Graveyard

We just can't wait for Halloween, so Lady Di and I helped Sweet Pea host a Fall party for some of her friends. There were no costumes so it wasn't a Halloween party. But the decorations, food and games definitely had a Halloween theme.

The weather threatened rain, but thankfully held off.

We started the night with a community service. A friend of ours sends small bags of treats overseas to a charity which distributes them to underprivileged kids. Our first party game was an assembly line bag filling contest.

Sweet Pea must have thought this was the 'make a face' picture.

Then the girls got to decorate their own treat bags to be filled later. The markers, stickers and beads entertained them for a while, but they started to get antsy. So we quickly moved on to boo bingo. Which is just like regular bingo except I would randomly sneak up behind a girl and yell boo at them. Number One Son assisted by running the bingo calling. And thank goodness he did. Not only did he buy us some time to sweep up stray beads and clean up wayward stickers, but he really had the girls entertained by building suspense before each call. He got them all cheering and groaning as a group for every call.

After all of the excitement and drama of boo bingo, we brought out the pizza and witches punch. Lady Di froze a pair of 7up filled vinyl gloves to float in the red punch bowl. One finger even broke off for effect.

Next was dessert. But the girls had to earn it. We hung three strings from the ceiling and tied donuts to them. So with hands behind their backs, each girl giggled and hopped and used their fishmouths to pull, lift or tear their dessert down.

Once their desserts were devoured, we needed to cool the girls down. Time to bob for apples! Some girls were clever enough to grab the apple stem.

A few girls got a good face washing. Some had eyes as big as apples when they came up with fruit in their teeth.

Next was walk the plank. We do this game for most of the kids' parties. Each girl was blindfolded and led up the plank and told to jump at the end. The object is to make the girls think they are walking up to a height greater than the six inch rise of the plank. Some of the girls knew what was coming. Some girls didn't want to jump but laughed when they found out the trick. One girl actually looked forward to jumping blindly into a deep pit and was disappointed when the truth was revealed.

By now it was dark enough for the bonfire. I got a roaring blaze going and settled into a lawn chair to enjoy the dancing flames. Unfortunately, I was alone in my interest. The girls decided to play Ghost in the Graveyard instead. Which is basically tag in the dark. And instead of counting to twenty, the 'it' person counts the hours to midnight.

But they must have tired just before the party ended, because they eventually gravitated to the fire like moths and told ghost stories. I threw a few color flame packets into the fire for the girls to ooh and ahh at the green, purple and blue show.

At 8 o'clock the parents came to retrieve their goblins. Fortunately, there weren't any fights and all the girls got along and all participated. I hope they all had fun and I was very impressed by their good manners.