Tuxbury Pond Early Halloween Celebration - 2021/09/25

This week we're in Massachusetts/New Hampshire at the Tuxbury Pond camping resort. It's a very popular resort with the seasonal campers who have been here since April. But, because of the weather, this place closes from October 15th - April. People can either leave their RVs here, or drive them out to go somewhere else. Because it's such a community here, they like to do an early Halloween celebration in September. One of the other campers told us that we are here for the very best weekend of the year, and that it's the whole reason they come here!

The kids have wanted to be Minecraft characters for Halloween for a while now. This gave them a chance to dress up early! Ian is a Creeper with dynamite, and Alli has dressed as Alex with a pickaxe. 

The camp sites here have room for storage to keep decorations, so some of them go all out! There's a contest for who has the best decorations!

The kids are excited about everything. Candy Bar Bingo, Craft time making a spooky spider, a Halloween Mask creation, the Scavenger Hunt, Trick-or-Treating of course, and the Costume Contest. 

There's 316 different camp sites at Tuxbury Pond. I'm not sure how many have kids, but our neighbors said to plan for 150! They also suggested making baggies with candy in them to hand out instead of handfuls. My candy winnings from Hershey became "our candy winnings" and were donated to make up a portion of the candy we'll be giving away. 

Time to make our spooky spiders! At the Pavilion behind the main office there were lots of pipe cleaners, puffballs for eyes, and a worker there armed with a hot glue gun should you need it. 

Ian is going for a 3D spider with glasses. Alli is making a white web and a black spider. 

There's even a couple flies that got stuck!

Alli's spiderweb got some party decorations. They had a whole lot of fun with it. 

The scavenger hunt started right at noon. We were there at the main office a few minutes before noon and found this message taped up. Us and at least 30 other kids were looking all around the office trying to find Gretta the Witch's lost luggage. 

Honestly the Scavenger Hunt was a little disorganized. There were kids running around looking for who knows what. Some grabbed a broom that was sitting out by an RV and brought it back. The camp staff had them put it back. Other notes came out talking about other items, but there were so many kids running around picking up anything that looked out of place around the campsite I don't know how it all played out. 

The main office had complimentary popcorn that the children both took advantage of, and we walked around the campground as well. Did Gretta run into a tree? Or is that just someone's decorations? 

Time to make some masks! Theresa ordered Minecraft masks for both kids, but since Halloween was so far away, we sent them to Michigan to pick up from family. We were able to get a Creeper mask for Ian, but it arrived damaged and it was really poorly designed. The eye spacing was way too wide so even an adult couldn't look out both eyeholes at the same time. 

That's okay! The kids love making their own creations! 

While I was busy taking the grandparents to the airport, Theresa and the kids made some pretty amazing masks from stuff we had in the RV. 

Kids, you did a fantastic job! 

Since we're going to be out Trick-or-Treating ourselves, we left a table with a bunch of bags of candy on top. Hopefully they don't all get swept into the bag of the first kid who shows up. 

Our first stop was the main office. They've got a table set up. They've also put together a list of all the sites that have said they were giving out candy, but honestly it seemed like every campsite was giving out candy. Lots of people were sitting outside in chairs handing out treats to all the kids walking by. 

And there were quite a few buckets sitting out. The kids were good and only grabbed one piece. Ian is focused on getting 3 Musketeers tonight, while Alli took whatever looked good. 

The kids got so many compliments on their homemade costumes. Not everyone knew what Minecraft was, but they appreciated the effort that went into making them. They thought they were much better than the costumes you can just buy. Like back in the old days. 

There were some great decorations and even a walkthrough haunted house. 

Ian was happy to see these Utz Cheeseballs! He first got them back in California and it's why he really wanted the Utz Cheeseballs when we visited their factory a few weeks ago. 

This giant spider, attached to a speedy RC car would hide out of view, then zoom out to scare people as they walked by. 

The kids spent over two hours walking by every single one of the 316 sites here, walking over 4 miles. In the end, they came away with more than 15 pounds of candy!

And in a complete surprise, there was still candy left on the table I had out. 

That is a lot of candy!

Can I have a taste of your Jolly Rancher? Sure, can I have some of your popcorn? 

Later that night at the costume contest, the kids danced to the beats of DJ Mayor Mackie. 

They didn't win anything in the costume contest, but they had a lot of fun. Some of the audience favorites were the little Ariel (her mom was dressed as Ursula), and Dwight from The Office. 

The next morning it was time for Candy Bar Bingo! The entry fee was 1 candy bar for all 5 rounds. All the candy bars were split up and set aside as prizes. 

There were 5 different games we played. Regular bingo, four corners, an H, luckiest loser (where everyone stands up and if the number they call is on your card, you sit down), and blackout. 

When we got here, all the kids got raffle tickets, and numbers were chosen between each round. Alli won!

Ian was so happy for his sister!

We got pretty close on a few of them, but didn't win any of the bingo games. The kids still had fun though, and Alli loved her coloring book and markers. 

Theresa has fond memories of sorting all her candy too. How to do it? Split up the chocolate and fruity candy, then divide it down further after that. 

All sorted! This was certainly a fun week! Both kids want to come back here next Halloween!

Ian - Tuxbury Pond - My favorite part was Halloween! Grammy and Grandpa got here. they where excited when I got there. We got 15 pounds of candy! It was so exciting. 

Alli - Tuxbury Pond - My favorite prt was trik or treat. We saw grammy and grandpa. We got a lot of candy. We gave owt candy to. I wont to go back.