Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!  It has been a fantastic October in the Fuji household.  We made our annual trip to The Live Oak Canyon Pumpkin Patch and have been to several Halloween parties.  The girls have already had the opportunity to wear their costumes several times, and can hardly sit still in anticipation of tonight’s trick-or-treating festivities.

Yesterday the girls spent an hour with Fuji Papa carving pumpkins and giggling.  I’m not sure who ended up having the larger grins, the girls or the jack-o-lanterns!

Out of everything this month, one of the highlights, according to the girls and their friends, was the fun they got to have with HEXBUGs.  HEXBUGs are small mechanical robotic bugs that use robot technology to move and “interact” with their environment.

I was chosen to throw a HEXBUG Nano Halloween Party, and received a big box of different HEXBUGs and habitat sets.  On Saturday we attended a family part at a friend’s house, and we surprised the kids by setting up a big HEXBUG arena in the garage.

Although we had a bunch of fun games and activities, like bobbing for apples and reaching into boxes to touch “brains” and such, the activity around the HEXBUG arena was constant.

I had some activites planned for the kids and the HEXBUGs, but they needed no direction, creating their own activities faster than I could say “Boo!”  The Nano Halloween Zombie bugs have removable glow in the dark exoskeletons.  The kids devised a game where they tried to capture the Zombie bugs.  If captured, they collected their exoskeleton for points.

There were at least 6 kids playing with the bugs at any given time.  What we really loved, was that despite some big age gaps in the large group of children present, they were all playing together!  My 2-year old was interacting with a 10-year old, and both were giggling and talking animatedly about what was going on.  Even the adults couldn’t resist the HEXBUG fun, picking one of the bugs up from time to time to see how they moved.

The best part, from the adult perspective, is that because our kids were so enthralled with their HEXBUG activities, we all got to eat the chocolate pumpkin bundt cake that I made in peace.  When does that ever happen?  I love those bugs!

What are your kids/grandkids dressing up as?  What are your favorite Halloween traditions?  I hope you all have a fun and safe All Hallows’ Eve!

* Disclosure: I received the HEXBUGs and habitats for free from Innovation First Labs, Inc., but was not required to write about them.  All opinions expressed are my own!