Round these parts Halloween is pretty fun. It's my Gramps's birthday, so it has always been a celebration. Not into the gory stuff, just a extra fun day to celebrate, dress up and what not. As a kid I loved the dressing up (mostly because that meant I got to wear makeup! and eat candy! and stay up late! all the normally forbidden things when you're 8). Also, if I'm reminiscing about Halloweens of days past I need to include my elementary schools AWESOME carnival, called the Shriek-o-Rama which was soooo much fun - oh, fond, fond memories!! Now, it's just fun to be the grown up in my own home and decorate and prepare for it. Last year was the first year in our house and we were shocked at the number of trick or treaters we had. Apparently, our street is the place to be. And I guess I understand the appeal. It's a cute flat street (in a very hilly little valley) and our neighbors decorate with lights and jack o' lanterns and spider webs. But we didn't feel like celebrating. We had just gotten Gabe's diagnosis and pretty much wanted to keep to ourselves. Handing out candy was the only thing we did. THIS year though, we were prepared and ready to join in the festivities!!
Blitz got in on it too. Joe stuck him in his old EMT jumpsuit, and to our amazement he kept it on all night. It was quite the hit with my family and the kids who came to the porch.
So I invited my folks and my Granny and Gramps over to help me since Joe had to work that night, and I knew it would be busy with kids and thought they would get a kick out of seeing everything since anymore their streets are VERY quite on Halloween. What I didn't know was that since it was the night before Daylight Savings was to end, Joe got to start work an hour late. It was great to have him there too. We carved our pumpkins, got to visit with everyone, and played some rounds of Quiddler (a really fun word making card game), and manned the door. We mostly let my mom have candy duty, which she loved. We live in the same district of the elementary school that she works at, so to see the kids' reactions when they saw her at the door was hysterical. You know, that feeling of weirdness and shock you would have if you ever ran into one of your teachers outside of their classroom in a real place, like the grocery store or gas station? That's what was all over their faces. "Mrs. L? YOU live here?!?!" Then you could hear them muttering to themselves after they had gotten their candy the mind-blowing fact that Mrs. L had given them Halloween candy.
This was the first year that my Gramps didn't carve a jack 'o lantern for himself on his birthday. He just thought that all the carving and scraping would be too much for his hands this year - I wish I knew how to work the scanner, because there are some really cute pictures of him at around 4 with his birthday pumpkin that are priceless. I just love my Granny and Gramps. There is no one like them!! I'll have to do a post some day just about them - they have a very romantic story (well, I think so anyway) complete with a blind date meeting and a war wedding. This past July they celebrated their 67th anniversary. I want to be like them.
So we had about two and a half hours of a solid stream of people, and the grand total of trick or treaters was 168. We had 6 big bags of candy that I had gotten, my mom brought 3 and Granny brought 1 and we still had to send dad out for a candy run to Safeway before the night was over.
Aaaaaand Blitz helped himself to his own treat at the very end of the night. When things died down at the end, I pulled the pumpkins in so they wouldn't get smashed in the street overnight and placed them on the hearth for safekeeping. Ha!! I was in the kitchen cleaning up, and when I walked back into the living room, that's the sight that greeted me. Who knew dogs liked pumpkin?
