Best Girl Costume ages 4-5

Every year a local private school, Baobab College, puts on a fire works display in early November.  We’ve never gone to it and had no idea what to expect.  Tim stayed home with Ian while Andrea and Ireen went with Karen and Tracy Singleton.

I noticed there was a “Fancy Dress” competition to be held open to all children.  Ireen and I worked in the afternoon to create her costume, a black-eyed susan in a flower pot.  Her petals were made of construction paper and covered with yellow crepe paper (aka kreepy paper) and her flower pot was a paint can with the bottom cut out.

We arrived and were amazed and the magnitude of the event, it could rival many county fairs in the States.  After gaining our bearings, Ireen and I stood in line for “candy floss” (aka cotton candy).  After that we got chicken lollypops for dinner.  In no time the costume competition was ready to start.  There were quite a number of children but only about 10-15 in Ireen’s age group.

After her group walked across the stage, the lights went out.  I budged through the crowd, found Ireen’s hand and pulled her out.  She was crying.  She’d never seen children dressed up as witches, mummies, gruesome creatures etc.  I was done with the competition and regretting that I’d pushed her into it.  After another 45 min – 1 hr once they had gotten lights back on and completed all the other age groups, the winners were announced for each group.

Ireen won…well, the “weed in the flower pot” is what she was called J . She received a gift and a fizzer (kinda like laffy taffy).  Then we saw fire dancers and finally the fireworks display.  The display was amazing and midway through Ireen exclaimed, “Probably the fireworks are for all the children who won!”  Tracy, Karen and I got a good laugh out of that.