Halloween 2010

What a busy night!!  But we planned for it much better this year.  First, we decided to give out candy from the garage this time.  We live on the main road (a very loooooooong road) in a very large subdivision.  People who don't live in subdivisions or who live out in the country end up here for "trick or treating."  So we have a constant flow of kids (and teenagers and ... even some adults!).  The garage space worked out so well!  It got a little chilly by the end, but so worth it.  The mobs were much easier to handle.

But let's back up a bit.  We carved our pumpkins this afternoon (sorry, pictures are still on the camera).  A few funny things I thought I'd never hear while carving pumpkins:

"Nothing says fall like the Death Star."

"I'm taking my pumpkin into the bathroom."

I laughed about that second one good and hard, more than once.

My pumpkin was carved with a pattern of four ghosts singing and wearing bow ties and top hats.  It was cute, but way more intricate than I thought it would be.  Hubby had to help me out.

His pumkin was an owl in a tree with a crescent moon.  His was the type where you just scrape off the outer skin and leave the flesh and the candle inside makes the fleshy part glow.  It looked really cool.  I promise, I'll post pictures, though the pics aren't as good as seeing it in person.

Dinner was the usual Halloween night pizza.  I got to introduce hubby, aka, my personal chef, to one of my all-time favorite frozen pizza brands.  He actually liked it!

As soon as we finished up dinner it was time.  We put the pumpkins on top of the cars, set out some chairs and a TV Table, and on the trunk of hubby's car set out three little candle holders I have that say "B-O-O" when you line them up (a gift many years ago from my mom).  With a coat on and a blanket tucked around me, we were set.

And the kids came, dressed in all sorts of fun and cute costumes.  I saw three UK Wildcats (all probably about a year or so old), several princesses (Snow White, Cinderella, etc.), cheerleaders, Buzz Lightyear, super heros, all sorts of other cartoon characters, police men, Michael Jackson, and lots of non-descript "costumes."  Plenty of the goulish stuff too, the "Scream" face never seems to go out of style (do you think Edvard Munch would approve?  Or has that face been made popular by some other more recent thing in pop culture I'm blissfully ignorant of?). 

Hubby's favorite costumes were: "Spaghetti dinner": kid had one of those cheap plastic red and white checkered table clothes draped over him, a bowl of "spaghetti" (string?) and meatballs in his hand, and another bowl on top of his head with the fake spaghetti and meatballs spilling out over him; and a 4 or 5 year old dressed as a UPS man.  Hubby said he may start handing out special treats for the costumes he thinks are the best.  Any ideas?  (I suggested full-size candy bars.)

Hubby and I were commenting on the teenagers while we sat out there.  So many of them!  They are obviously too cool to carry Trick or Treat bags, so they come with plastic grovery bags, backpacks, or purses; and some are apparently too cool to wear costumes, so they don't; and many are too cool to say "trick or treat" so they either say Happy Halloween or nothing at all (at least they do, generally, say thank you).  If you're too cool for all those things, might it be possible that you're too old to go out Trick or Treating?

For my own future reference, for those with older kids, when do you tell your kids they are too old to go trick or treating?  Is it in high school?  Or possibly earlier?  I don't remember when I stopped going, but I'd guess it was sometime around 8th grade, give or take a year.

And the garage set up ... totally worth it.  It didn't feel overwhelming, we weren't constantly opening and closing the door, we weren't trying to hold open the storm door while also handing out candy in the little narrow space that is our front porch, and having 10-20 kids show up at one time was manageable when you are sitting in a very open space.  Definitely worth doing again!

How was your Halloween?