MES Halloween Parade

The signal event for many kids in Malad for the Halloween season is the parade from the school to the hospital and back.  This year, the weather made for a perfect day for kids to show off their costumes to friends, family, and the public at large.  While state health restrictions made it impossible, once again, for students to visit the inside of the longterm care facility, students took a path around the hospital so that residents could still see the display through the windows of the facility.

As always, a wide array of costume choices, from the classic witches, ghosts, and pirates, as well as the more contemporary were in full force.  As the students giggled and played their way through the parade, parents smiled on from the parade route, snapping as many pictures as possible.

Pumpkin Contest

MES also hosted a pumpkin contest, sponsored by Thomas Electric and Farm Bureau, and organized by Becky Cox and Elsie Maughan.  The contest, which has been very popular with kids in the past, was brought back in full force for this year’s Halloween.  See separate story and pictures in this edition. 

Scales and Tails Visits MES 

In conjunction with Halloween week, Utah’s Scales and Tails founder Shane Richins visited Malad Elementary for a presentation to MES second graders.  If you don’t think second graders care about lizards, spiders, turtles, and snakes, you’ve clearly never met second graders.  From the second Richins took the stage, hands were in the air nearly the entire time, despite teachers’ attempts to get them lowered.

Scales and Tails is a family-owned public education and entertainment company, which takes their love and knowledge of animals on the road to help bring a clearer understanding of sometimes misunderstood creatures to the public.  Always a big hit at the Fair, the company also attends corporate events, fairs, birthday parties, and in this case school assemblies.

Richins, clearly a practiced hand with the animals involved, led student through a parade of animals from the smallest—a curly-haired tarantula and Asian forest scorpion—to the largest—a sulcata tortoise and a reticulated python—with rapt attention from the audience throughout.

Halloween in Curlew Valley

Despite the weather turning cooler, the Curlew Valley ghouls and goblins came out to play for loads of Halloween fun.  Spooky festivities may seem like a frivolous celebration but it's just the right trick for a little community comradery.

The eerie excitement kicked off with the annual EMS sponsored Holbrook Trunk-R-Treat Friday night.  Friends and neighbors gathered to show off their charming costumes, share tasty treats and enjoy a hot bowl of soup or steaming cup of hot chocolate.  The night may have been chilly, but there was nothing chilling about the fun these friends, young and old, have with each other.

  Poulsen Farms of Snowville hosted the usual ghastly gathering to enjoy an enchanting night of disguises, dinner and dancing at their annual Fall Ball Saturday evening.  Halloween haunters came from near and far to line up their cars for the monsters and mummies to parade around while asking for treats instead of tricks.  The friends gathered first for some frightfully yummy food and then a boot stomping good time on the dance floor.  The Desert Rose fancied the crowd with their very best country tunes as the dance floor was filled with everyone from the farmer and his cow to Disney princess favorites and the everyday spooks.

 On Halloween day, the festivities continued on as the students, teachers and parents of Stone Elementary had a paranormal party of pepperoni pizza, costume parades and pumpkin decorating.  The culmination of the celebration was the airborne treats dropped by Rob and Aimee Stokes as they buzzed passed the Stone Elementary in their plane and let loose Halloween parcels.

While the season calls for pranks, spooks and tricks, the greatest treat of it all is a community that takes time for a little fun for one and all.