Halloween 2009

So I have always really loved Halloween! As a kid I used to look forward to it for weeks! Some of my costumes included a mouse (my first Halloween), Michael Jackson (complete with a leather jacket, white glove and a Pepsi can....I was 3), a gloworm (this was one of those 80s costumes with the mask and then the plastic smock that actually had written on it what you were supposed to be), an old witch and a she-devil. As a teenager I even dressed up as Bill Clinton and my friend was Monica Lewinsky (with the blue dress and everything!). My dad would take my friend Clint and I around our neighborhood and we'd come home and sort our candy. Yes folks, I was OCD even then. We would carve the pumpkin and my parents would decorate the atrium near our front door with fake spider webs and big spiders. My mom would hang up pumpkin decorations all over the house and she also included this skeleton decoration that was connected with brads so you could pose it in different positions. That was the one decoration that freaked me out. I remember asking her to move it because I felt like it was staring at me! There was a house in my neighborhood that had a little haunted house you could go through. I am pretty sure they owned a funeral home because they had real coffins right there in their house! They would have people jump out and scare you and bowls of peeled grapes and cold noodles you stuck your hands in. These were supposed to be all sorts of brains and other gross stuff. Instead of being horrified, I loved it all. It was awesome!

Back then I would never have imagined that Halloween could possibly get more fun. I was wrong! Dressing up Brendan and James, carving the pumpkin on my own kitchen table, walking around our own neighborhood to trick-or-treat and making the "pumpkin brownie" with my mom for my own kids were all perks of parenthood! (The "pumpkin brownie" is an idea my mom got from a magazine ad for Betty Crocker in the early 80s. We made when I was growing up and we are continuing the tradition for our kids now). James liked it all so much. Can't wait for B to get into it too! Check out my train and my monkey. I think you'll agree they're pretty cute!