Halloween Parade at Linden Elementary!

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were relatively quiet on the Halloween front. I did work a bit on my own costume (more on this later) but I didn't have to supervise anyone else's Halloween fun. Until Friday, when I arrived at the Linden Halloween parade just in time to help Jacob change into his costume.

The Linden Halloween parade is a time honored tradition, dating back quite a few years. Most of the Pittsburgh public schools do them, as far as I can tell from talking to me friends. Earlier this year, the Linden Halloween parade was canceled. Immediately, parents took action. I received this email about three weeks ago:

"I tried to speak with [the principal] today about the Halloween parade. She had someone else inform me that it was canceled. She said that the Board of Ed felt that it was not a constructive use of the students' time.

Someone has forgotten what it's like to be a kid! This has been a tradition at Linden since before we were kids. Please call the number above and/or email. They are working our kids quite hard these days and seem to have forgotten that the kids need to enjoy school in order to keep doing so well on the PSSA's."

In short order, the parade was back on.

For Jacob the parade was the cherry on top of a field trip to a pumpkin farm during which he got to go on an actual hay ride and play in a corn maze. When his class got back to Linden they started to get ready for the parade. The parade consists of each grade walking outside while parents and younger siblings look on proudly and take pictures.

Jacob's costume this year is pretty involved. It started out simple enough. I wanted to imitate the live-action costume worn by "Ang" in this summer's adaptation of the Nickelodeon series, Avatar: The Last Airbender. Here is the picture I used for my reference.


I found someone on Craiglist to sell me their son's karate gi for $10.00. Jacob and I dyed it yellow and brown. We also wanted ivory colored socks and arm sleeves, but we couldn't find any that were off-white, so we bought some white ones and dyed them. Then I bought some Burgandy colored ribbon to make the leg ties, arm ties, and belt, and we found some boys' slippers at Target that looked just like Ang's shoes.


The day of the Halloween party Jacob and I figured out that tying the leg ties and arm ties was going to be tricky. I thought if I just tied them tighter that they would stay up. WRONG! They fell down during the entire length of the parade.


Worse still, I forgot the face paint to make the blue arrow that Ang has on his forehead. At the last minute Jacob and I raided his art teacher's classroom and got some blue duct tape. It worked pretty well, though not great. Jacob was able to smile through his tears for this picture.


And here is his new good buddy, Connor, who was a super hero of some kind but I can't remember exactly which one.