Halloween!

Halloween is here!  Hooray, hooray!  It's not like the girls have had Halloween fever for the past month or anything...oh, wait...

Because watching Halloween movies, making Halloween cookies, hanging jack-o-lantern crafts all over our walls, and playing "Haunted House" is not *quite* enough pre-Halloween preparation, we have made sure to cram in every last fun Halloween activity to get ready for the big day.  Aunties Shannon and Caitlyn were aiders and abetters in this Halloween mania.  Together, they created a short chapter book for Julia and Madeleine, sending the text they wrote for me to read to the girls, with the opportunity for the girls to create accompanying illustrations:

Julia and Madeleine got immediately to work on their drawings.  Can anyone guess which page Madeleine illustrated?

I'm particularly fond of Julia's pig-nosed pumpkin, shown above.

After finishing her illustrations, Julia decided to make a Halloween book for her aunties in return.  Without asking anything of me, she sat down and wrote out the words all on her own, creating her very latest masterpiece, "Lee lee is a Wich."

Cover:

I guess she decided her initial text was unacceptable.

Now that's MUCH better.


Page 1:

With all the cross-outs and write-overs, I'm a bit lost as to what's going on in the text here.  Clearly Julia does not share Madeleine's compulsion to start each imperfect word over until she gets it right, and instead goes for the time-saving option of correcting her own mistakes on top of each undesirable letter.  I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume it says: "I'm Lee lee the Wich."



Page 2:

"Lee lee is my love.  I love you to."  Aww.  Sweet.


Page 3:

"Lee lee go and stop." 


WOW.  What a dramatic ending.  I don't know if I can handle being left with this cliffhanger.  What happens AFTER Lee lee go and stop?!?  How can Julia leave us in the dark like this?  I'm hoping there will be a sequel out soon: "Lee lee the Wich 2."

In addition to Halloween books, the girls and Ethan got to work last night carving jack-o-lanterns, adding to all of the Halloween excitement:

And, even more exciting, Julia gets to look forward to a Halloween parade and party at school today.  Her teacher even encouraged the kids to wear a part of their costume throughout the day today, before changing into full regalia in time for the parade.  Julia headed off to school donning her witch hat:

Which meant, of course, that Madeleine insisted upon wearing HER witch hat on our way to drop Julia off at kindergarten:

Unfortunately, I was not able to break my streak of heading to school with crying kids, even though it's a fun and exciting day.  Madeleine was not satisfied with *only* copying Julia's hat.  She was reduced to heart-broken sobs over the fact that she did not also have striped leggings and striped socks like Julia, and she felt completely gypped over the matter of not also having a raincoat inside her backpack as we drove over to school.  The fact that Madeleine does not actually have school today and therefore needs neither backpack nor raincoat was a moot point, in her eyes.  Her orange pumpkin shirt and black pants simply would not do.  It's identical-twins-with-Julia or bust.

I'm sure there will be much more to post about our Halloween adventures trick-or-treating this evening, so stay tuned for a recap on tomorrow's blog!