Halloween, AWC-style

Since Halloween is widely celebrated in the US and is a fun day for kids, the women in the American Women's Club don't want the American kids here in Finland to miss out just because they're here. (Some Finns have started celebrating Halloween, but it's more geared towards costume parties for grown ups than for kids...) So the Club has put on a Halloween party every year for as long as anyone can remember. It's a big, elaborate bash, and it requires many people to pull it together. So I helped as much as I could with a small baby and had a lot of fun in the process!

We made tons of decorations to make the venue look festive and created game stations and trick-or-treat stations for the kids. There was even a "bat cave" that kids could crawl through. Even though Leila was too small to partake in the activities, I (and she, too) enjoyed watching all the bigger kids having fun. 

First of all, the coolest part was that every kid and the majority of parents there were in costume. Some people had made costumes, and others had store-bought ones either from costume shops in Finland or ones that relatives in the US had sent them. Spiderman seemed to be especially popular... 

The evening started out with a potluck dinner. There was an interesting mix of some classic American-style dishes as well as some very Finnish dishes and a few international ones. So we had fun sampling a variety of foods.

After dinner, the games started. There was a ring toss (tossing rings onto a broomstick), a "pin the smile on the pumpkin," a bean bag toss (into the mouth of a ghost cutout), a relay game (carrying a styrofoam eyeball on a spoon) and a couple others. The kids got prizes for playing the games, which they enjoyed immensely!

Lastly, there were 6 trick-or-treat stations. The kids got to go around to different conference rooms and closets and knock on the doors to get candy. They seemed to have fun with this, even though it was an artificially created arrangement. I think they were just glad to have the opportunity to go trick-or-treating period.

So here are a few photos of us at the party. (In the third one, you can see some of the game stations behind us.) Leila and I went as a kitten and mama cat. Leila's cat ears ended up being a bit too big in proportion to her head so a few people thought she was supposed to be a mouse. In any case, many people told us how cute Leila was, and one little girl kept coming around to find us to say hi and play with Leila. I thought we looked pretty good considering that I only had a couple hours during a nap time to make our costumes!