Charleigh Brown, the Great Pumpkin

     I have a scout-mom good friend who has organized a boy scout haunted house for the past 5 years.  Last night I was privileged to help out a bit. I don't have the opportunity to be around little kids very often in my day-to-day life, so I had a blast!  It reminded me, yet again, how really good and sweet children can be.
     I got to run the pumpkin ping-pong toss....5 chances to toss ping-pong-eyeballs into pumpkin pails for only 1 ticket.  This simple game appealed to the small set. I did get lots of exercise chasing the bouncy eyeballs as they caromed around the cafeteria off of walls and between people's feet, but the kids helped, too, racing after the eyeballs they had lost....I think that was half of their fun. The best moment was when a costumed toddler dressed as a convict in stripes, took a try.  He was a smart kid....he gathered his ping-pong-eyeballs and toddled over to the pumpkin buckets and neatly put one in each.....no risky tossing or bouncing the eyeballs for him!  (This baby convict also won his age group in the costume contest).
     A popular game for the older elementary kids was shooting a rubber-band gun at a row of shrunken plastic heads and skulls dangling from strings.  How creative!  Of course, the most popular kid activity was the cake walk....but I got to see more than one winning cake accidentally upended on the floor while the winner wandered around.
     The boy scouts ran the haunted house.  There were hallways of games run by girl-scouts.  I was so proud of my friend for pulling off such a great event. It could have been chaotic, but wasn't.  I do not have that skill set.  I would have been pulling out my hair, but she remained calm and cheerful all evening.

     This morning was Saturday family fun-run group with costume contest.  Some people had amazing costumes!  I seem to lack the creative gene. Charleigh went as a jack-o-lantern.....Charleigh Brown, the great pumpkin.  The pet costume winner was a little chihuahua dressed as a squirrel.  He won 3 big marrow bones, bigger than he was, so shared one with Charleigh who was out of her mind with joy.  The costumes did freak Charleigh out a bit....especially the beagle in full fireman regalia complete with helmet, and the little boy dressed as a fuzzy purple dolphin who must have resembled a big stuffed toy.


Eat. drink, and be scary..........author unknown.