Remembering Halloween

One week ago today was Halloween, but there's been no time this week to look back on the holiday. However, my sister-in-law Lori and my niece Cami both had the chutzpah to post their Halloween blogs several days after the fact, so I will do likewise!

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Here's Dylan in his pirate persona before school that morning. We had fun applying the Johnny Depp-style eyeliner! Well, Sarah and I enjoyed it--Dylan was slightly less thrilled!

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Our usual tradition is to dress up the kids and hit as many community activities as possible. That usually includes the town trunk-or-treat, a school carnival, and a church party. Then the kids end the night with some old-fashioned trick-or-treat in the surrounding neighborhoods.

This year we were only able to attend one function: the Halloween carnival at church. Jacob's priests quorum was in charge of "Spook Alley," so he spent the week locating ghoulish items and setting them all up on the stage.

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This is the first picture I took with Jacob's faulty camera after mine quit. Just tell yourself those are ghostly images of spirits who attended the carnival with us!

Dylan painted a pumpkin with his high school Big Sister, Chanda, and Jacob scooped out the seeds and roasted some yummy pumpkin seeds, another of our annual traditions.

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We spent the entire evening at the carnival. It's fun to see all the creative costumes and the kids' excitement as they join in the cupcake walk, dunking for doughnuts, bean bag tosses, balloon darts, and other fun booths.

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The Spook Alley was a success. My good friend Gwen and I heard plenty of playful screaming coming from the stage! Lots of kids went back time and time again. At left is Jacob with one of his little ghoul-friends while cleaning up after the party.

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That night Sarah went to babysit for a neighbor while the boys and their friends haunted the neighborhood until about 10:30. They came home with their bags well filled with candy. I happily accepted donations of small M&Ms bags and bite-sized Crunch bars!

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Now for a short trip down memory lane. Back in the early 1980s, my friend Julie worked at a bank where they had an annual pumpkin decorating contest. For about 3 years she brought me a pumpkin she planned to enter and an idea for how she wanted me to decorate it. If I remember correctly, I think our pumpkin won every year.

Here are Julie and me with our winning entry for Halloween 1982. I was a baby then, just 28 years old. Julie was 22. (It was bedtime, if you wondered about my nightgown!)

I hope you also had a memorable Halloween. May Halloween 2009 bring you many more happy hauntings!