Happy Halloween

I told Doug this week that without any of our children living at home, my excitement for Halloween had waned.  In the past, I had loved watching my children pick out their costumes, co-ordinate with friends to go trick or treating and then help pass out candy while their carved jack-o’-lanterns lit up on our front porch.  Without their enthusiasm, it just didn’t feel the same.  I did still buy candy for the trick-or-treaters and decorated the house, but overall I was feeling lukewarm about the holiday this year.  

Thankfully, that changed today and the Halloween that I wasn’t really looking forward to became a wonderful day.  First, I met my friend Robbi for lunch at Panera thankful for the cool weather so that I could wear my jack-o’-lantern sweatshirt.  We had a nice visit and were even able to find some time to shop before I had to head home to meet Doug to get ready for all of the trick or treaters.  He set up the chairs and table at the end of the driveway while I turned on our new pumpkin lights on the garage door and got the Halloween vinyls ready for ambiance.  We decided to hand out Tootsie Pops and Reese Cups first as those were always everyone’s favorites.  

Trick or Treating started out slow, but we weren’t surprised as it did last year as well.  I had bought enough candy for 700 children as we had 611 last year.  I thought that we might have more this year because the holiday fell on a Friday night.  I definitely guessed wrong as we ended up with only 543 this evening.  We wondered if the cooler weather scared some of the families off or if it was because there were more events being held because it was the weekend.  Even though it was a smaller group, we still had a lot of fun and loved seeing all of the costumes.  

Our evening didn’t end when we came inside.  Doug and I stuck to our family tradition of watching the movie Halloween and enjoyed it just as much as in years past.  As much fun as we were having, my favorite part of the night was receiving texts from all of our children with their costume choices for this year’s Halloween.  Brett and Karen were first with a photo of Michael Myers and a Hogwarts Hufflepuff student.  Cameron’s was next with his Riddler costume that was totally homemade with Cal sharing his usual, a Woopie Cushion.  Meg went as Marnie from Halloweentown while her friend Mallory was dressed as a pirate.  I loved all of their pictures, even Nick’s last minute parrot, cowboy, pilot trio.  In the end, I was incredibly glad that my feelings about being separated on Halloween had been completely changed.  We didn’t have to be in the same home or even the same town to celebrate the holiday together.  That was the best feeling of all.