Our favorite Halloween tradition - Dry Ice?

I wanted to share with you our favorite Halloween traditions.  My husband started it when our kids were really small, and honestly at first I thought it was pretty crazy and extreme.  But our kids beg for it every year and I know it's something they will remember forever.

It's pretty simple really.  We get some dry ice from our grocery store, then fill our cauldron with Kool-Aid (just follow the directions on the package) and then add the dry ice, one small rectangle at a time.  It bubbles and hisses and smokes and they love blowing the smoke around and watching all the craziness!  We put it right in the middle of our newspapers while we are carving pumpkins and it adds a lot of fun.  Plus, they love the super cold Kool-Aid!  Whenever it starts to get too tame, we add another rectangle of dry ice to the cauldron.  We re-use the same cauldron every year, it's just a little cheap one we got from Target.

** Note, dry ice can be dangerous, so watch the kids closely and never let them put their hands inside the bowl.  

And tell me, what is your favorite Halloween tradition?






Want to see all my posts?  Put your email address here to become a subscriber!

Enter your email address:

The Merits of Letting Daddy Interfere

Sometimes Hubby just isn't practical.  And sometimes he wants the kids to grow up immediately.  A perfect example was our first Christmas with Munchkin Girl.  She was seven months old and he insisted that we needed to go buy a real Christmas Tree and his reasoning was that Munchkin Girl would think it was really fun.  The seven month old baby. 

I grew up with a fake tree and always thought it was fine.  I don't deny his heart was in the right place.  He wanted to bond with our little daughter.  However, he just didn't realize that a seven month old wouldn't care about a tree at all, let alone whether it was fake or real.  I gave in like I always do and spent the entire Christmas Holiday cleaning up pine needles and fighting with the dogs to get them to quit drinking the water from the tree.

This brings me to this Halloween.  With Munchkin Girl at 3 and Little Buddy at 18 months, we were both excited about pumpkin carving.  Then Hubby decided to take it to a new level.  He decided we needed dry ice.  I don't know much about dry ice, but I do know that it's not something you want your 18 month old to be sticking his hands into.  At first, I protested.  I said they weren't old enough to appreciate it and it would be a total hassle and could even be dangerous.

Then I had an epiphany...why not?  I'm lucky to have a Hubby who wants to put in the extra effort to have fun with the kids.  If I end up having to clean up a little extra, so what?  So I let go...and look what my Hubby did...


The kids thought it was super cool and we had it bubbling while they cleaned out the pumpkins.


Then, it evolved a step further.  Since the kids can't really hold knives and carve a pumpkin, they got to paint the pumpkins while Daddy did the actual carving.  They really enjoyed this and I was so glad that I didn't stress over the mess they were making.  Admittedly it took a lifetime to clean up this spectacular mess, but it was totally worth it.


I guess the moral of this story is that I need to chill out and have fun.  It's an ongoing process, but I'm happy to report that I'm making progress in the right direction.