I am completely Halloweened out. With the storm, losing electricity and all of the rescheduling due to bad weather, it seemed like “Halloween season” was interminable this year.
My girls even got tired of wearing their costumes, if that tells you anything.
We went to a local church’s festival one week and to the mall trick-or-treat event the next.
We went to Halloween Story Time at the Library. We watched “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” and “FrankenPooh.”
Then I decided that I hadn’t suffered enough so I threw a big Harvest Party on the last day of October. Our power had JUST come back on after the hurricane, so I looked inadvertently scary to the neighborhood children – I wasn’t really in costume but I did bear a close resemblance to a sleep-deprived zombie. There were some close calls involving our homemade piñata stick and our pumpkin bowling game, and one of the little boys looked at my hand-drawn pin-the-crow-on-the-scarecrow poster and said, “What is that?” But nevertheless, it was a fun party.
Last but not least, we participated in our neighborhood’s regular trick or treating this past weekend. It was pretty cold and Jedidiah had decided he was done being Yoda so I ended up taking him home. I bundled him into the car and we drove around the neighborhood until we spotted his dad and sisters so we could give them a ride home (it’s hard to walk in Queen Amidala’s shoes.) The girls could barely haul their candy bags into the car. It turns out that the generous people in our neighborhood gave out full-sized candy bars! Full-sized! I don’t remember ever getting a full-sized candy bar when I went trick-or-treating as a kid.
Through it all, there have been gobs of leaves, broken branches, a couple of rotting pumpkins (remember all of the warm days we had a couple of weeks ago?), some scarecrows, a little witch, a squishy muddy pond, a downed light pole, a giant capsized tree, some questionable power lines and who knows what else lying around in our yard.
Inside, there’s a dangling skeleton (we usually use it to learn about bones when we’re talking about science) and seven pumpkins, including two fake pumpkins and various and sundry gourds. Light sabers are now a fixture behind our kitchen door, right next to the umbrellas.
A gigantic pile of Halloween props has taken up permanent residence in my bedroom closet. There’s a Darth Vader helmet, a cane, three headpieces, four candy bags, two pairs of fuzzy boots, several capes, clip-on earrings, green paint, Ewok ears and who knows what else.
It looks like a candy bomb has exploded in our house. Candy is EVERYWHERE. Even though the girls have their own individual trick-or-treat bags in their rooms, pieces of candy are in the kitchen, in the pantry, on the stairs, in coat pockets, in the car – EVERYWHERE.
Every five minutes (and I am not exaggerating) Jedidiah comes to me holding up a new sucker or a roll of Smarties that he has found squirreled away in someone’s stockpile. He begs me to open it, doing the cute little bendy-kneed “candy-dance.” This is inevitably closely followed by the “fall-in-the-floor-and-scream-because-you-can’t-have-it-dance.”
Let’s just say that Mommy is tired of both dances.
The pumpkins? To the compost pile!
The scarecrows? I say we just put some aprons and shoe buckles on them and call them pilgrims.
The candy? I want to throw it all in the trash and hide. And also brush my teeth.
I have never been so ready for Thanksgiving – and one thing I’m thankful for is that we are finally done with Halloween.
from my 11/11/12 article for www.mentorpatch.com