The Joys of “Haul-oween”

So, we survived our month-long Halloween celebration. Truth be told, I LOVE Halloween and it always takes me back to my own childhood when we’d go out for hours in those sub-zero Canadian temperatures. Those days were for the purists, when we wouldn’t be caught dead carrying one of those woosy trick-or-treat bags you see today. Yep, I’m talking about the plain ‘ol pillow cases we used to haul a year’s worth of candy.

And this ringing the doorbell thing? It was for woosies. If you weren’t loud enough to scream out “Trick-or-treat,” you weren’t worthy of the candy. Fortunately, being heard has never been a problem for me.

For my Halloween-obsessed-kids-in-training, we did it all this season. We threw and attended parties, hit the pumpkin patch, a trunk-or-treat, did a Halloween hike (with goodies along the trail), gorged ourselves at a pumpkin pancakefest, and had a neighborhood parade (complete with a firetruck leading the procession), followed by trick-or-treating.

The next morning, I learned that waking up at 5 a.m. with The Hurricane does have its advantages. I.e. before the rest of you had even dragged your sorry butts outta bed, I had taken down all our decorations and was the first to hit the apres-Halloween sales yesterday. And did I ever score! Because every household has to have a fog machine. And what would our front yard be without Marcus the Carcus next year? But call me crazy, I thought the point of a sale is to actually save money and not spend it.

The only real tragedy was Jamie’s when his pride and joy was butchered. I mean, the only blogs the man has posted lately are surrounding how proud he was of that pumpkin. And this is how he found his baby yesterday….
I won’t give you the sordid details of the discovery. Just know it ain’t pretty to see a grown man cry. And finally, a picture collage of some of the highlights and lowlights of October. Let the countdown begin for how many days we have until the next Halloween…