Day After Day

Halloween!

***

While searching for costumes they quickly realize that most of the leopard costumes they find are marketed towards girls. And it's fine, Jesse likes wearing skirts and gravitates toward the costumes anyway, but they're worried about him going to school in it. He's never gone to school in a dress or skirt before and he'll probably be okay, but they don't know.

They use the Fall Festival his school is hosting as a sort of test run. The festival is a couple weeks before Halloween and he's been wearing the dress around the house, twirling around to watch the skirt flare out around him. Noah finds a dress that more or less matches Jesse and it makes her feel a little better. It took him a while to get comfortable, and he doesn't do it often, but Noah does have a small collection of skirts he likes to wear, which might be why Jesse has built up his own collection. Jacquie finds a similar dress and somehow Richelle gets talked into wearing a full costume as well.

The morning of the festival Noah sets up their kitchen table with face paint and stage makeup. Jesse doesn't have the patience to let Noah paint his face all at once so he does part of it then sends him off and does Jacquie's. And she gamely lets him do most of her face, complete with leopard spots before Jesse comes back to get the rest of his face paint. Richelle only lets Noah do his usual nose and whiskers on her for Halloween since she's wearing a full costume and she hates the feeling of even just that.

When they make it to Jesse's school they stop by the classroom hosting the cake walk to drop off the cake Noah made as one of the prizes. Almost immediately Jesse takes off after his best friend, Wren, Henry and Amy's daughter, following her to their classroom. When the adults make it to the classroom Richelle lets out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. Most of his classmates seem to be in the room (presumably, it looks like a classroom full of grade one kids and she's assuming they're all in the same class) and the only comments on his costume are about how pretty the dress is.

As the festival goes on kids float in and out of the various classrooms, most of them hosting games, but a few have been connected with tunnel-like structures to form a haunted house. Jesse and Wren stick close together so the three of them make their way through the school with Henry and Amy, following a spotted tail and fairy wings. Apparently Piper and Finn are around somewhere too, but they're following around their four-year-old, RJ.

The five adults sit a couple tables away from the kids as they decorate cookies in the caf. Even though it's mostly for the kids Noah has several bowls of frosting in front of him and he's working on an intricate sugar skull design. Noah's only about half-done with his design when Jesse worms his way onto Richelle's lap with his own cookie, a black cat.

"Wren's almost done, can we do the haunted house next?" Jesse asks, looking between all the adults.

Jacquie reaches across her to ruffle his hair, "Of course, although I think we might need to leave Daddy behind."

Noah doesn't move and Richelle's not even sure he heard, too focused on decorating. Jesse shifts to Jacquie's lap to share his cookie with her while they wait.

They do end up leaving Noah behind after Wren joins their table, sharing her cookie with her own parents as they walk upstairs. Piper and Finn pass them in the hallway, Finn holding a teary dinosaur.

"He wasn't a fan of the haunted house, we didn't even go all the way through," Piper explains quietly, not wanting to keep the older two from trying it out for themselves.

Wren presses up on her toes trying to get a better look at her brother, "It's okay RJ," she pats his leg and offers him what's left of her cookie.

Richelle stifles a laugh and she notices the other adults similarly holding back laughter. Finn accepts the cookie on his son's behalf even though they're probably on their way to the caf to decorate their own cookies.