Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Unearthing Prince Eric - Happy Halloween

For some reason there comes an age when being cute just won't do. Princesses with ringlets and fairies with sparkle dust; cowboys with plastic guns and sheep dogs with painted noses... they're all so adorable! But there is some allure to being something frightening, something that scares others.

Halloween provides just such an opportunity. An opportunity to become something gruesome for a night and go about terrorizing people in their homes. Our kiddos were no different. Moments before our spooky little ones hit the street Ryan made up the faces of a ware wolf, two vampires and a scary alligator... truly a frightening bunch... though through the face paint, the dripping blood and fanged teeth, there were four smiles that could not be masked! And they must have had a successful evening, because somehow we ended up with four heavily laden bags of candy, much more than I began with.

Without doubt the most frightening thing to visit our home this month came disguised as a headless mummy. Last year for a school project Braden had to make a sarcophagus. He begged Prince Eric, Ariel's handsome prince, off the girls, wrapped it in medical tape, and transformed it into a mummy. You would think they would be appalled, but no, they thought it quite an honor for their prince.

After he fulfilled his role at school, it seems our embalmed Prince Eric somehow found his way into a bush in our front yard. There he had been peacefully resting before being unearthed by a pair of twin archaeologists. You would have thought they'd found King Tut himself by the way they danced their way into the house with his decapitated body. They passed him along to the embalmer himself who seemed to reminisce over this great prince that once was.

Silence.

Then a repetitive high pitched scream that could have been coming from a little girl, but instead from the depths of a twelve-year-old boy.

Emmry running with her own version of the same.

The twins staring mesmerized.

What curse had Prince Eric unleashed on our home?

As Ryan and I entered the living room we found that out of the body... out of that pea-sized neck hole of Prince Eric... had climbed a giant spider the size of a tarantula. Perhaps it was a tarantula. Both empty body and spider lay on the floor where Braden had dropped them. There was little talk of keeping this mammoth arthropod as a pet as I was completely against it!


You can bet we learned two lessons from our archaeological experience: 1) never disturb an embalmed prince, and 2) next year for Halloween dress as a headless mummy!

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