I felt like a very successful hostess last night, with thirteen of the sixteen kids we invited showing up for the party (twelve of them in full, elaborate costume!). I knew it would be a good night when Magda, arbiter of All Things Cool, gave this verdict (translated and paraphrased, of course) ten minutes after arriving:

“Usually if someone has a Halloween party it’s just a cake and a couple of pumpkins, but they’ve really succeeded in making it creepy here, with the darkness and the candles and music and all the decorations. Lydia always gets to have unusual parties. On my birthday I get only ‘normal’ parties.”

I was so delighted when I heard her say that that I rushed away to Olof to give him a big thumbs-up and myself a big pat on the back.

A large part of the evening was frilek, or unstructured play, but we also played a couple of games and built a fire outside to roast marshmallows, pinnbröd (thin strips of bread dough wrapped around roasting sticks), and hot dogs. In retrospect, I’m not sure that an open fire with only one adult to fourteen kids was the best thought-out plan I ever had, but it all went well enough (apart from the fact that the vast majority of them hated the marshmallows). It was cold enough that only a few of them stayed out longer than ten or fifteen minutes, so it was only really nerve-wracking for that short period of time.

One of the games was sort of a variation on bobbing for apples — I filled disposable pie tins with Jello and stirred in several pieces of candy (I had wanted to use gummy worms but had to settle for gummy body parts). The contestants had to put their faces into the Jello and try to find and pick out the candy with their teeth. It was HILARIOUS! One of the boys said it was the “most disgusting thing ever,” in that eight-year-old-boy way that really means it was the greatest thing ever. They really seemed to love it, even clamoring for a second round after the first.

I got the best laugh of the night when one of the boys asked me nervously, “Will anything happen if I got some of that stuff in my mouth?” I assured him it that would be fine, and he replied, “Good, because I accidentally swallowed some.” He gave me a veeerrrry skeptical look when I told him that Jello is actually food and that American kids eat it all the time. I can only guess what kind of toxic ooze he must have imagined I was serving up for them to bury their faces in!

So, it was a good time, all things considered. I don’t think Lydia was as happy with everything as I was–she had built the party up in her mind for far too long to have been totally satisfied with anything short of a supernaturally good party–but I’m sure she’ll be begging for another one next year. She has declared, though, that boy-girl parties are right out from now on, having discovered that the boys–brace yourselves– went into her bedroom. That simply will not be borne.