After two years of Montessori, we decided to jump into the fray and enter a car in the Trunk or Treat event at school. We figured, "Why not? It's Alex's last year there, we've had a chance to check out how it's done." Plus, the ultra competitive side of me wants to win the decorating contest...
We chose Angry Birds for the theme, because Alex is in love with the game, especially the green "boomerang" bird that no one else on Earth likes. It's because it's the hardest bird to control, and you have to wing it like a boomerang and if you don't get it just right, it can crash into the ground, and now I'm going off on that ridiculous, addictive game. Anyway, you can't buy a costume of the green bird, so we made it out of poster paint, cardboard, Sharpies (pronounced with a Boston accent - "shaawwwpees", and a mother's precious, precious love.
Once the costume turned out so well, it lead to the car theme, and a weekend spent painting, cutting and cursing large pieces of cardboard. Friday through Sunday was kind of a blur and I'm not sure what else happened, but I think a Libyan dictator with Jheri curl was killed and the Bears had tea and crumpets with Queen Elizabeth and Albert Pujols hit a bajillion home runs.
Matt put together a large child-sized slingshot, no, not actually to fit a small child, but about the height of one. We'd use one of our cornhole/bags boards to have the kids try to slingshot a stuffed Angry Bird into the board hole. We made a pig face on it. We downloaded a DJ's remix of the annoying theme song of the game. I would be the red bird, Matt would be the pig king, Alex the green bird, and Greer the blue bird. We had all of the pieces in place for sweet victory.
Convinced that we would triumph over all of the other Montessori parents, I drove my parent's borrowed Navigator into the school parking lot. I felt like Caesar returning from the Gallic Wars...until...I...saw...the...moving...truck. Holy shizzz...someone rented a fricking moving truck? What are they doing? Omigod, they are totally having a haunted house up in there! How can I compete with mere cardboard and dreams? WHY DIDN'T WE THINK OF THAT?!?
Okay, they didn't have a haunted house, it was actually a pretty display of mums, haystacks and gourds. Very cute and harvest-y. But we definitely dodged a bullet with the moving truck. And most importantly, we had a great time and enjoyed watching the kids play the game and get excited when they came over. It was especially fun to see kids Alex has gone to school with for nearly three years now and their parents. It was just lots and lots of fun!
