Spooktacular

Josie and her friends and Benjamin the Knight

Spooktacular is a huge, all school, Halloween party/festival that takes place every other year.  It has been an enormous source of emails, flyers home and especially excitement from both kids for weeks. 
Yesterday was the day!  The kids dressed up and we all walked down to school with Aurora, Nils and their dad.  We had purchased 5€ tickets weeks in advance so we were all set.  We arrive at school shortly after the gates opened at 5PM and the school already seemed packed. 

Upon entering each student was handed a Halloween goody bag with several pieces of candy and other treats inside.  Josie immediately runs into several of her friends.  She has gone through some ups and downs regarding friendships here.  She seems to have always had a friend or two, even from the first day when she met the other Josephine, but lately we have been wondering if she is enjoying her friendships here.  She has talked about Elliott more the past few weeks and I know she is missing her good friends from Seattle.  However, in the past few days and certainly last night, I saw her silly side come out with her friends and it made me super happy.  She was surrounded by her friends the entire event and was in her happy, social element the entire evening flitting from friend to friend.  It is interesting all that I worry about here with each child!! 
But back to Spooktacular, they had little events strewn throughout the entire campus.  Nearly the entire event was held outside.  Thankfully, it was a beautiful, Fall evening.  There was no rain and it was even a bit warm.  Josie quickly broke off and ran around with her friends the entire evening.  Benjamin had made plans to meet up with his buddy, Clayton.  Apparently, they told each other that they would meet at the sand pit at the beginning of Spooktacular (😆) Unfortunately, the event didn't include the back sand pit area and we were never able to find his friend during the event.  Like I said, it was packed!! 
Benjamin and I went together to all of the little booths.

Benjamin having his palm read by
a high school volunteer

There was bowling and ring toss and palm reading and then there was "Frankenstein's Lab" -  a small play put on by high school students.  I've said this to Marty several times but there is something really cool about having kindergarteners through high school seniors on the same campus.  I think there is something really important about that cross generational/all ages intermixing that you don't see at an average US school. 

half way through the night
Benjamin realize his costume
was on inside out!!

The older kids need to be patient, holding the bike gate for younger bikers and the younger kids somehow are held to a higher standard with older kids around.  It is pretty cool.  The school is 1700+ students in grades K-12 , so pretty huge.  Events like Spooktacular are particularly interesting because there were SO many high school volunteers helping with each station and helping younger students through the various events. 
Inside the cafeteria was a bake sale where you chose and paid for  a small, medium or large (1, 2 or 3 €) paper plate and then walked through and filled up your plate on various donated baked goods.  It was a cool way of doing it however, all my kids ate for the entire night was a bunch of cake, cookies and cupcakes.. 'tis the season, I suppose. 

About an hour or so into the event everyone crowded around a performer who was a flame eater and flame thrower (?!?!?!?)  Seriously!  It was nuts.  My first thought was there was NO way this would fly in a Seattle school. 
The performer even dropped his flamed item a couple of times.  haha!! Benjamin was in complete awe!!  No one was hurt and he put on a pretty good show. 
The kids had a great time and on the walk home we felt just a few rain drops... perfect timing.