Halloween

My jury is still very much out on celebrating Halloween.  It's getting bigger and bigger each year and I think Tess almost prefers it to Christmas because of the opportunity to gorge on thousands of lollies.  With regards to the lollies I'm of the view that they might as well eat them as quickly as possible because a) if I'm lucky it will make them sick and they might not eat lollies for a while; and b) once the lollies are gone we can't fight about whether they can have one or not.  

 Jessie, Tess, Sarah, Olivia

Daniel, Tom

Tess arranged to meet up with her besties so that they could all get dressed up together and head down to the local street which gets shut off to traffic to make it safer for all the children.  I was informed that I was allowed to discreetly wave if I passed them on the street but on no account was I to disturb them.  Tom invited a friend over to get dressed up and the 3 of us headed to the local street to check out the action.  It is amazing the amount of trouble that people go to.  One family had converted a large piece of play equipment into a haunted house and there was a constant queue of children waiting to go in relishing the sounds of screams coming from the inside.  Another family had been very creative with their mini which included a remote controlled smoke machine!  I followed the boys round and filled up the bowls of lollies with the ones I'd bought - these poor people go through thousands of them.  

See - smoke from the smoke machine!

I'm pleased to report that 4 days after Halloween we have not fought about eating lollies - Tom has finished all of his and Tess has 1 more lollipop to go.  Sadly neither of them have been sick.  

The band program at our school is incredibly good and it starts with each child identifying the instruments they are interested in and then carrying out a "blow test" so that the music tutors can assess whether they are suited to the instrument.  This includes taking into consideration things like embouchure, size of child, ability to make out different notes and hold a rhythm etc.  As a result of this test Tom will be starting the saxophone next year and I'm not sure which of us is more excited!

Jules flew to South America this morning for business.  The children were upset but did surprisingly well and the week will pass very quickly.