Pretty Scary

You must go over to AC's blog and see the pictures he has posted. The ones of this year's Halloween are quite a hoot! The story of his first Halloween is a tear-jerker though. Take a hankie!

We both dressed up and sat out on the front porch to greet the little munchkins last night and had a total blast. AC uploaded scary Halloween sounds on his ipod and set up speakers in the porch so he could add sound effects to the evening. Things were set up early in the afternoon, costumes donned around 5pm, the bowl of treats full to overflowing shortly after that, the pumpkin lit at 5:30 and we were ready to take up our posts. Armed with steaming cups of coffee laced with Bailey's to keep us warm, we awaited our first visitors.

We were entertained by a steady stream of witches, ghouls, ghosts and goblins, beauty queens, bunnies, skunks, elephants, cats and ponies. Yes, ponies – and lots of them. Big and small, timid and bold they were all cute. I was surprised not to see one Harry Potter this year though, but I was visited by one Hobbit. The most creative costume was produced by a kid about 12. He had a base costume made out of white plastic garbage bags and attached to these bags were scraps of newspaper, coffee cups, candy wrappers, and other items of garbage. On his chest he had taped a sign that said "White Trash"! He wins the prize for the most unique costume this year.

AC turned up the sound affects in the porch when he saw older kids coming to the door but turned them down or right off for the little timid ones. He was all dressed in black and wore a big black and orange hat pulled down over his face. He sat quietly in one corner controlling the sound and I sat in the other corner giving out the treats. When he turned up the sound, some kids were quite taken back and gave him a frightened look. Next year I think we should make him seem like a lifeless stuffed scare-crow and then have him move suddenly. That would be fun.

We had 150 treats ready to hand out and they ran out before the munchkins did! Next year I guess we will plan for over 200! I should have known to get more when we drove down the street yesterday afternoon and observed the elaborate displays on some houses. One house had bales of hay on the front lawn and over thirty carved pumpkins artistically arranged on the bales. A few doors down another house had set up an elaborate tent system to pass through to get to the front door.

Well, I guess that is enough rambling for today. Hope you had fun last night and don't overload on chocolate today. Talk to you all later.