A Halloween Reminisce

Since Halloween is this week, I thought I'd dig through some boxes of old photographs and reminisce a bit about the Halloweens our family has celebrated. We've never embraced the scary/creepy side of Halloween, but we are all about the fun! For most of our kids' growing up years, we lived in a fabulous neighborhood for trick-or-treating...a real family affair of parents, kids, and pets going door to door, lots of ooh-ing and ahh-ing over costumes, and always the whispered, "Don't forget to say thank you!" in the dark. 

Bethany, our oldest daughter, using the same candy pail that I used growing up.

With Julia on her first Halloween - 1993.

Some years I got creative with the costumes and made them (like the pumpkins above), some years we purchased them, and some years we hodge-podged a costume together from whatever we could find in the dress-up box. What was I thinking with that Humpty Dumpty costume? Yikes! That's a blackmail worthy sort of photo! He looks a bit dazed, but the girls look happy!

And then there were three...Raggedy Ann, Humpty Dumpty, and Snow White. - Halloween 1997.

Our traditional Halloween night dinner was hot dogs and macaroni and cheese, because it was quick and there was almost no clean-up and everyone was just eager to get out the door. Inevitably, a small trick-or-treater or two would ring the bell while we were eating, and this would start the angst about missing all the fun. Then it would be into costumes and their turn to trick-or-treat.

Rapunzel, a dog, and a cat. - Halloween 1999? or 2000?

We would take the kids house to house on our block and on just two other neighboring streets. One of those streets, a cul-de-sac, would have a circle of homeowners in the middle of the street with their portable fire pit and bags of candy and would pass out candy to the kids there, while having their own little party with glasses of wine.

Princess Leia, a "fierce" knight, and Laura Ingalls. - Halloween 2002.

I hope all of you have a fabulous Halloween with your families...full of cutely costumed kids, fun, and lots of candy!