Howloween

THE HORROR!:  Saturday morning the kids donned their Star Wars costumes again, and we headed to Experience Music Project for a special "Howloween" event.

Admission was free = awesome!

Here's Annabelle's short recap of the morning. 

On October 24, I went to EMP museum for “Howl-O-Ween”, an event where they had activities and such that you could do. The first thing we did was watch a small section of “Monsters Inc.” On the big Sky Church screen. We then got scavenger hunt sheets, which required us to look for things around the museum or answer trivia questions such as what the Wicked Witch of the West’s (from the Wizard of Oz) castle guards were named. Another activity we did was make Halloween bags and masks. We also participated in a costume parade where you’d come on stage and say what you were dressed as. Of course, we had to stop and play our favorite game: "Tenya Wanya Teens". It was very fun and I’d like to go again!

By the way, did you know these soldiers at the Wicked Witch of the West's castle were named Winkies? (Finding that out was part of our scavenger hunt.)

Here's what CJ had to say about Howloween

On October 24th, 2015, we went to EMP for their "Howl-O-Ween" event, where we would trick-or-treat* and fill out a sheet with trivia questions for a prize. The sheet has us answer different trivia questions, for example, what the name of the dragon in the "Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic" exhibit**, and Kurt Cobain's 1993 Halloween costume, which was Barney the Dinosaur. On the back side of the sheet, we had to draw a monster, give it a name, and give it a favorite food. I named my monster "George," and said his favorite food was ribs. When I turned in the sheet, I got a stylized guitar pick as a prize. Lastly, there was a costume parade where we could get up on stage, say our names, and say who we were dressed as. I am dressing as Luke Skywalker this year for Halloween.

*By that, they meant crafts. I think it's a very loose definition of "trick-or-treating".

**In the exhibit, although there were signs talking about dragons, none of them mentioned this dragon's name. We asked the volunteer if he knew the name, but he said he didn't know, so mom had to Google the dragon's name. It turns out the dragon is named Adalinda, and she was donated to EMP by the North Seattle Opera.

While at EMP, we just *had* to visit the Horror Film exhibit, since it's almost Halloween and all. 

 We saw lots of cool monsters, props and costumes, including this famous suit from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video.

And this friendly zombie ...

We spent some time in the Science Fiction portion of the museum, of course. With all of the "Back to the Future" stuff in the news recently, we had to stop and admire the hoverboard, of course. 

Here, the princess ponders a control panel.

I took this cool pic of the kids and Tweeted it.  

We were rather flattered by EMP's response ...

How 'bout that? :)

HOOPLA:  We recently took on a bit of a project. A couple weeks back we received an email from the school the kids attend a few hours a week asking people to be on the lookout for outdoor furniture and a portable basketball hoop for the playground. We happened to spot one on the Buy Nothing group we're a part of and a kind neighbor was nice enough to donate his hoop to the school. We had to go pick it up (it being about 12 feet tall, and made mostly of heavy steel), and transport it to our place. Once we had it here, we decided to service it, so that it will be trouble free for years to come at school.

We ground off rusty spots in the paint ...

and then repainted the pole a nice flat black.

We even fixed a couple of cracks in the backboard with some stinky epoxy (which worked really well, might I add), and then repainted the backboard (a nice flat white).

Christian and I delivered it to school early this morning and set it up. Hopefully, it gets a few more years of good use!