Halloweekend…is how I’m describing our life during the last few days of October and because Laura has been busy with her 30 day blog challenge, I offered to write this post about our weekend.  So I hope you enjoy my vain attempts to captivate you with an awesome anecdote of our life experiences.

Since this is the first halloween weekend that we were going to be in our house, we assumed that we would have a bunch of little munchkins knocking on our door, saying “twick o tweet”, and then promptly stuffing their little face with sugary goodness.  As I thought about preparing for this truly bizarre tradition when you think about it, my first instinct was to eliminate our role in contributing to childhood obesity by providing more healthy alternatives, like raisin boxes or fruit cups or fiber one bars.  That thought was promptly nixed by my lovely bride saying that all I want to do is to destroy childhood for all American children.  So we bought candy.  Prepared with candy we realized that we needed some outdoor accessories, especially since our neighborhood decorates for halloween like it’s Christmas.  Fortunately, our opportunity came when some friends of ours, Daryl and Celia, invited us over to a pumpkin carving party.

This was a fun experience, albeit a little messy, and frustrating since we drove to the moon and back looking for good pumpkins to carve.  Advice – get a pumpkin before the Halloween weekend.  Eventually we found some good ones and headed over to the party.  We were among talented pumpkin artists complete with patterns and specialized carving tools.  These people put my generic face pumpkin to shame.  But it was still fun.  We got into it and Laura was ambitious by trying to carve an owl on a tree branch from a pattern to fit in with our pumpkin Picasso’s and Rembrandt’s.  I chose a generic face but got a little creative by using the pumpkin guts to make him look like he’s throwing up. Ew, I know, but it is Halloween after all.  By the way, if you want some interesting ideas for pumpkins next year, check this out!

So after we finished carving our pumpkins, we went transported them to our porch and waited to put candles in them the next day to attract the candy pursuing young ones.  The pumpkins looked great the next day on the porch except that unfortunately Laura’s labor of pumpkin carving love – the owl, fell/twisted backwards and now looked like a bat hanging up-side down on the branch.  At least that’s what it looked like during the daylight.

However, when it got dark outside and we put the candles in the pumpkins as lighthouses to attract the neighborhood kids, I realized that Laura could not have carved a more perfect piece of thong underwear!

Anyway, we had a great time as first time passers-of-candy-to-kids-who-dress-up-and-say-trick-or-treat.  We say the gambit of costumes from Iron Man to Buzz Lightyear. From Geishas to Fairies.  From Luigi to Goblins and beyond.  One of my favorites was a little 3 and half foot tall police officer.  When he came to the door he said the traditional trick or treat.  Then I asked him if he was going to arrest me for which I got a blank stare and another “trick or treat.”  I had to chuckle.  It was a good evening.


Now remember that I do enjoy pyrotechnics as a hobby on a grand scale (July 4 shows, etc) but also on a small scale, so when all the kiddies were back in bed, I tried a fun little experiment with my pumpkin.  I had some left over magnesium flares from awhile ago that I decided to put in the pumpkin to see what would happen.  The result was something entertaining.  Take a look.

I especially enjoyed when smoke was just pouring out my pumpkins eyes.  Well, that about wraps up our last weekend in October.  I think it was a great way to kick off November, but you can decide and let us know!