Halloween!!!!

Hi folks!  I know it's been a few months since I last posted, but I just didn't have the motivation.  Now I have a few fun things to share so we'll begin with Halloween!


Halloween is my favorite holiday (with the possible exception of Christmas).  When we first bought our house in Normal, I was psyched to hand out candy since we lived in a neighborhood with a lot of young families.  Over the three Halloweens where we were all ready to pass out candy, we had a grand total of zero children ring our doorbell.  Zero.  Now I know that some parents are really paranoid about taking their children to houses of people they don't know, but there had to be a good handful of "irresponsible" parents out there judging but the kids who were always playing unsupervised in the alley as I was trying to drive home.  I remember one year where we'd bought so much candy for the no-show trick-or-treaters that I tried to pawn it off on the pizza guy.

This year, things were different in Wisconsin.  Shortly after we moved here, I learned from a neighbor that the area where we live has two different trick-or-treating options.  This year, the city had trick-or-treating scheduled for Sunday October, 28th from 1-4 PM.  1-4????  Halloween is supposed to be creepy!  There is a rush of adrenaline in walking past spooky decorations that goes beyond vast amounts of sugar.  Luckily for me, our area, "East Towne" holds it's own trick-or-treating.  From 6:30-8:30 PM on October 27th we could sign up with the neighborhood association to hand out candy to kids.  Not only that, but a lot of people go all out in the decorating department.  This inspired DJ and I to invest in some cool outdoor decorations.


That's an animatronic Frankenstein.  He roars and lights up when someone walks past.  We also had fake boards on the windows and some zombie warning signs out by the driveway.  

Ok, so Saturday night rolls around.  I got dressed up as the Queen of Hearts and DJ went as the Mad Hatter.  Note that we weren't going out anywhere to celebrate afterwards, we just dressed up and hung out at home alone :)  We didn't have that many trick-or-treaters, but I was sure we'd have a ton the next day for the city-wide festivities.

And boy did we ever!

I was so excited that I started out the afternoon by giving out fist-fulls of candy.  And not some lame stuff- Twix, Skittles, Butterfingers, etc.  Well I made several mistakes.  1.  I didn't bother to estimate how many kids we had.  My grandma Richardson always took a tally so she knew how many Tootsie Roll Pops to buy each year.  DJ's mom did the same thing.  I was not smart enough to do so.  Mistake number 2 was the amount of candy I was handing out.  With over an hour left to go, we were running dangerously low on candy.  This prompted a very panicked scene that enfolded as we were running back and forth between answering the door and ransacking the kitchen.  It went something like this:

*Cabinet squeaks as we open it*
DJ: Do we have anything else?
Natalie:  I'm looking!  *pause* Oh!  Here's a few jawbreakers.... Some pez....
DJ: Um, what about these?  *holds up a bag of crystal light hard candies*
Natalie: No way!  Those are sugar free!  We can't hand that out!
DJ: What about these? *pulls down my hidden bag of milk chocolate dove miniatures*
Natalie: Are you crazy????  I'm not giving those kids my good chocolate!  Not to mention it is foil wrapped not sealed in plastic so I think that's a bad move (a nice recovery, I thought).  What about this?  *holds up a box of hot chocolate packages* It's freezing out there!  And it's chocolaty....  
DJ: *makes a weird face, then shrugs*  What about the snack sized bags of Doritos?  

Eventually, we ran out of even these wonderful treats and DJ volunteered to walk 4 blocks to CVS to restock.  Even after he came home we gave out over 60 pieces (one at a time) before trick-or-treating ended.

The best part of the trick-or-treating experience, however, was DJ watching the small children sloooowly ascend the steps to the house, ring our doorbell, and then rush back down to the bottom of the steps until we opened the door.  Why?  Because they were afraid of Frank!  Though he sort of stopped roaring and lighting up for most of the afternoon, the kids were terrified of him!  Even when I assured them he was fake and tried to shake his hand.  Watching the kick that DJ got out of watching scared kids was hilarious.  

Needless to say, Halloween was a hit at our new house!  And here is a photo of Albus to see you off...



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