An uneventful Halloween

I had such big plans for Halloween this year as it is one of my favorite holidays. My parents always made Halloween so  much fun for me growing up. These were back in the days when you were allowed to wear your costumes to school and actually call it Halloween instead of "Harvest Celebration" I remember doing the "costume parade" on the black top at Teach School in San Luis Obispo. My Mom was always the room mother and the class parties were always so fun too. My Mom always made my brothers and my costumes, we would carve pumpkins as a family and my Dad would take us out trick or treating. Then I remember afterwards we would end up over at my Grandparents where I would dump out all my candy and sort through it. I was organizing even back then at 7 years old...the smarties in one pile, the chocolate bars in another. I have the BEST memories!

Once I grew up and had my own family I carried on the Halloween traditions I grew up with. Although I never made any of my kids costumes, I made sure they were decked out in cute costumes they picked out. When Kate was little my parents would drive up and go out trick or treating with us. We've always carved pumpkins as a family. I was room mom for both kids all through their Elementary School days and had so much fun planing the "Harvest Parties". Another tradition that we started was visiting the Pumpkin Patch. When we lived in Northern California there was two fabulous pumpkin patches to choose from along with Apple Hill which was a family favorite.
                    
                    (pics of our outside Halloween decorations that I put out for Halloween night only)

Ahh...the memories. Things started changing however when Kate went away to college. Last year and the year before that Kyle would dress up and the three of us would take a trip to the pumpkin patch. This year however....it was the Halloween the "wasn't" and I was SO sad! Kyle was sick the whole week leading up to Halloween and the day of. So our trip to the pumpkin patch never happened and the Spaghetti dinner I was planning on making for him and his friends to eat before they went out trick or treating in our neighborhood was cancelled. Even with all of that I was determined to at least decorate the outside of the house and pass out candy to all the darling kids in their costumes. Being our first year in this house I wasn't sure how many kids to expect. I was a little concerned because of how our house is situated. We are in a cul de sac across the street from the Golf Course Club house and it's about a 1/4 mile walk up a hill to the next cul de sac with houses. I proceeded to buy A LOT of candy, "just in case" we had a big crowd. The "big crowd" of kids consisted of all but 4 trick or treaters, all of which were teen agers and only one cutie patootie small child in her Tinker bell costume!  So needless to say it was an uneventful Halloween. However on the bright side..we had lots of yummy candy left!

 I love how creepy this gate looks with the Cemetery sign on it! Normally I'm not for "scary" Halloween things, but Kyle gets a big kick out of it so I'm OK with putting out a few creepy things.

Here's hoping next year Halloween will be a litle more eventful...