Here in The Bean Blog household we are on the countdown to Halloween. I’ve never been a huge fan of Halloween. Don’t get me wrong. As a child I enjoyed trick-or-treating and eating the candy afterwards. But then it became a chore. I feel like I’ve been trick-or-treating every year of my life. By the time I was old enough to have outgrown it I had a little brother and then a little sister to take around the neighborhood. And then shortly after I graduated and moved out I had my own child to take trick-or-treating. So it’s gotten to be old. [Plus people always give out chocolate on Halloween and I don't like chocolate. :)]

I’m also not fond of horror flicks and ghost stories. So that part of Halloween never interested me. I’ve never been a Freddie or Jason fan. I never dressed as a witch or a goblin. I prefer something a little more sweet like the year I was Marilyn Monroe or the year Lee and I were a King and a Queen.

And it just seems odd that a Celtic holiday about the ghosts of the dead returning to Earth the night before the new year has now turned in to kids dressing in clown costumes or, even worse, slutty cheerleaders while begging for candy. When did all that happen?

But we have kids and they LOVE Halloween. They love decorating. They love going to the pumpkin patch. They love carving pumpkins. They love dressing up in costumes. They love trick-or-treating [even if it's snowing out and snot is smeared down our cheeks from our runny noses]. So I try to be a good sport about it. Even when the kids are whining or fighting with each other because it’s an hour past bed time, their adrenaline is on overdrive and their bellies hurt from so much sugar.

On Monday we found out we had been boo’d. Lee found a bucket of candy on our doorstep with a note. The note said we needed to make our own candy buckets and put them on other neighbor’s doorsteps. We also put the “We’ve been Boo’d” sign on our door so everybody would know we’ve already had our turn.

The kids were so excited about making the baskets and putting them on the doors. That is until it was time to actually put the baskets on the doors. Then they all came down with a case of the stomach butterflies. They were scared they were going to be caught. But Lee helped them get all the baskets delivered.

And this morning, the first thing they did was look out the window to see if the baskets were gone. They were.

The kids have been asking me for weeks “when are we going to decorate for Halloween?” I wasn’t planning on decorating for Halloween. Isn’t it enough I have to buy costumes? [Don't even get me started on the debate about how I must not really love my children since I buy their costumes instead of making them because I might bite you.] But apparently that isn’t enough.

Luckily Lee must love our children more because he decorated for Halloween. First he made this spooky milk jug skull to fit over a candle holder that dangles in front of our kitchen window.

Then he made our very own graveyard in the front yard. He spray painted the center of the far one to make it look like it was an open grave waiting for the next body. It even says next on the tombstone. Spooky.

Remember how we went to the pumpkin patch last weekend and ran out of time to actually get pumpkins? Well we remedied that today with another trip to a different pumpkin patch. Between Caleb’s class field trip, last weeks visit to the pumpkin patch and today’s visit to another patch, I’m a little pumpkin patched out. But at least we finally have our pumpkins.

Spencer found a really big pumpkin. And he was determined to carry it himself. He’s so strong.

We left the house with the intention of buying five pumpkins; one for each kid. However, we ended up buying eight. Plus a jar of raspberry jam. We’re such suckers.

Now all we have to do is carve them. I’ll think we’ll wait until tomorrow for that.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 27th, 2007 at 9:58 pm and is filed under In the holiday spirit. Comments are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.