I used to love Halloween. In fact, it was once my favorite holiday. Something about the colors, the season, the bright orange pumpkins, the dressing up, and let's not forget the CANDY. I loved spooky things, scary cemetery's, and haunted houses.
I remember Halloween as a kid too...
Dressing up at school for the parade in elementary school.
Dressing up in high school was always a blast!
My mom making chili almost every year.
Tammy spending the night and her and I searching for our candy loot in the middle of the night.
My dad burning the BBQ ribs because someone had shown up to buy my brother's El Camino.
When Larry and I got married we made our own tombstones with Styrofoam and grey spray-paint. We had a coffin with a scary dude inside. We had cobwebs and scary music playing from our front window.
Every year I made chili, like my mom used to. The first year we were in Oceanside I made chili but added WAY TOO MUCH hot stuff and it was TOO HOT TO EAT. Oops. My parents would come over for dinner and I set the table in oranges, blacks, and yellows with pumpkins and candy corn.
Year after year I made chili, by now my own recipe that I devised, my parents would show up in time for the CRAZINESS that is Halloween with young kids and a busy doorbell. All that was missing in those days was a crazy dog that barked every time the doorbell rang.
We finally had it down to a science. My parents would show up by mid-afternoon and we ate my chili and cornbread early...then they helped us get the kids ready in their costumes and off we would all go...
Whoever got tired first...usually it was my dad...would venture back to the house to be the official "hander-outer" of candy to the trick-or-treaters. Sometimes he would take a tired toddler with him. We would all venture back, go through the kids candy, enjoy a few "stolen" pieces for ourselves, and get the kids in their PJs and off to bed. The four of us would then either play some cards, watch a movie, etc.
When we moved to Idaho things changed a bit. We no longer celebrated Halloween with my parents which was a very hard transition. I missed them. But, we knew that life changes and we tried our best to roll with the punches. I continued to make chili but it was just Larry and I now at night getting kids ready and inspecting candy and hanging out after the kids have gone to bed, sugared up and exhausted.
2009. Here we are at Halloween in the middle of nowhere. With absolutely no one. And for the first time in as long as I can remember I was dreading Halloween.
We didn't carve pumpkins.
I made chili but way too much of it, for who knows what reason.
I was ready for the night to be over before it even began.
I wasn't in the mood.
I was tired of walking around among the millions of kids, parents, strollers, and Scream guys.
It was by far the most mellow night...weather-speaking...since we moved out of Oceanside (it was about 65 degrees!).
We went trick-or-treating with friends we met when we first moved here (they were new too) and after the kids (our three and they have FOUR) got their fill we all ventured back here...seven sugar-high kids and clearly not enough wine for me.
The dog, despite us giving her a pill to mellow her out, was excitable to say the least with our friends four kids running around and the doorbell going off every other second.
And, the fact that I was spending a holiday, the first (and easiest) of many more to come in the next couple of months, was depressing and made me sad and cranky and down. Yes, we have each other...yes, we forge ahead with new rituals to call our own...yes, we must accept change...yes, we must redefine our new reality...yes, things may get easier with time...yes, change is exciting...yes, we are making good memories for our children to remember...and anything else that everyone seems to be saying to me since this whole Pennsylvania thing started. I KNOW. But, no matter what the words are, the emotions remain. We are alone out here. It IS hard to be by yourselves on a holiday...even a silly little one like Halloween.
Love the pictures, the kids look great!! Tell Harrison his boobs weren't too big LOL. Hugs!!
Posted by: EE | Monday, November 02, 2009 at 03:58 PM