A Scientific Approach to Halloween

This was probably the coolest Halloween ever. Actually, I'm pretty sure it is going to be the pinnacle and it is just down hill from here. Despite the poor planning, the stressful parking searches, the late meals, and the poor snacking choices, we had an amazingly awesome day. Well, the kids for sure did.

First off, we took them to the beach for a few hours to play in the sand and water. For Elijah, it had been years since he had played in the sand, and for Aubrey, it was her first time (and naturally Joshua's first time to see and hear the ocean waves... and it not be a digital recording). It was a pretty warm day, topping out at about 80 degrees. Stephanie and I enjoyed watching the kids let out squeals of delight as they splashed around in the waves. I tried to play out in the surf with Elijah, but Stephanie kept having to abandon the baby to run down the beach after our fleeing toddler. So we tried our hands at building a sand castle and burying Elijah in the sand.

Then we had the horrible idea to break out some crackers for a snack to tide the kids over until later. This was a very bad idea, as we soon realized as the sea gulls began swarming. One even flew low to grab a cracker out of Aubrey's hand. She was not happy and dissolved into tears.

Don't we hate shoppers like this? She's in the 10 Items
or less lane at the Publix. You can see that all these kids
picked the shelves dry.

After all that, we went back to Miriya's apartment to wash up and eat a late lunch. Then we got the kids dressed up and went over to the Tampa Children's Museum for some trick-or-treating and mind-blowing fun. We played a few water games, fished for plastic fish off a short dock, climbed around some suspended platforms in netting, went "grocery shopping" at Publix, made a "pizza", slide down the firefighter pole and "drove" the fire truck, did some gardening, some electrical work, colored a picture, raced a parrot, made a paper pumpkin, built an arch, played in fake sand (apparently bits of rubber--see below), and just ran around and had a great time. Oh, and there was some of the staff handing out candy, so they even got some halloween treats to top it all off.

Ironically, Aubrey was dressed as a pirate, and as usual, we had to make sure she didn't steal anything from the museum. In fact, when she ran from the play restaurant, stuffing fake food items in her clothes, I commented to the amusement of the surrounding adults, "Hey, yah Pirate. Stop pilfering stuff."