Decorating For Halloween

I have to say that as much as I dislike having to be dressed and get out the door at a certain time to get the kids at school, one of the best parts is being able to see all of the arts and crafts the children have done. even better is when there is a festive holiday like Halloween, Easter or Christmas for the children to decorate for!

On a Normal day i pick up Logan at his classroom and wait outside it for Parker and Blake to make their way to me. Imagine the school as the letter "V" Parker and Blake are each one the very tip of one of the "legs" of the letter, and Logan's room is at the point.

Today was Music class for Logan, and parents are Strongly Encouraged to attend, so I of course attended! The class let out about ten minutes before any of the other grades classes did so the children who had parents with them were free to go. I considered - very briefly, because it is cold - going home and leaving Parker and Blake to walk, but decided instead to go and get them from their classrooms.

Since we always pick up Blake first, Logan and I decided to head to Parker's classroom this time, and am I ever glad we did! Because we always go to Blakes room, and Blake is very slow at getting ready, Parker meets us somewhere between Logan's class and Blake's class. We hardly ever get to see the older kids art work! (k-2 is on one side of the V, with 3-5 on the opposite side)

The theme for this Halloween appears to be SPIDERS! Oh man! I have never seen so many at one time! Four different displays, with 30-60 spiders to a display! (kind of wish the school would advertise when they decide to turn their halls into huge spider traps, just for those of us who have phobias!) If you take into consideration that a piece of fuzz caught on the carpet scares me with it's vague resemblance to a spider scares me, you can just imagine what walking down that hall did to me!

Logan liked the eggshell spiders the best - they had cut the rounded part of the egg carton off, painted them black and added pipe cleaner legs and scary painted faces - but my favorite was a decorating idea I had not seen before - At most grocery stores you can get tiny tiny TINY pumpkins, they literally fit int he palm of your hand. The kids had taken these pumpkins and painted them black, and added legs and faces to them. They looked both realistic AND scary!

I am pretty sure I broke Logan's little heart when I told him NO! Absolutely NOT! to the query of us making Spiders like this at home. it is important to note that while there is not much I will NOT do for my children, facing my Arachnophobia is something I CANNOT do for them.

I have tired to get over my fear, as it is a fear I have had for a long long long time. I can remember sitting down to watch the movie "Arachnophobia" as a young teen. I think it was with the hope of making them seem more fictional and fake - less scary, but THAT plan backfired on me. I also went through a period when I decided that you only fear that which you don't know, and researched Spiders.

I got the encyclopedia off the shelf and opened it to the word "Spider". I was put off for a bit by the fact there was a photo of a spider on the page. I solved that by covering it with a piece of paper while I read all about spiders. Now, I know a LOT about spiders, but I am still just as scared of them.

I bet I could write a five hundred page book on all the stupid things that I have done in response to my fear of the creature. One example - At nine months pregnant, I was sitting on the floor, cutting flannel into a pattern to make some sheets for the baby's crib. A Spider, just a little one, no bigger than the eraser on the end of a pencil, crawled out from under my pile of material. To my back was a couch, and directly behind the couch were the railings to the stair. I crawled backwards, in a crab walk to the couch and, still heading backwards, up the back of the couch to the railing, where I continued UP the railing. At nine months pregnant. Over a spider smaller than a baby's fingernail.

Oh well. Only one more week before the kids start decorating for Christmas!