Halloween

Tonight we celebrated our first Halloween in the new house, and new neighborhood.

Halloween is Zachary's second-favorite holiday, or in a tie between his two most favorite holidays. He and "Baby Papa" (Michael) gleefully shop for Halloween decorations and set them out.

Zach chose and bought his costume weeks ago, but couldn't wait to play with it and so managed to lose most of the pieces. So he put together…something…non-descript, but definitely a costume. His friend Lane came over to spend the festivities with Zach, wearing a slightly more recognizable outfit.

Michael, too, was disguised as some sort of something (a wizard? a ghoul?) involving chains that he used as a jump-rope in between visitors. Of course, the facial expression is an essential part of any costume.

I have, for years, lobbied for healthful snacks to pass out to the urchins that will be stopping by, but we always wind up with chocolate bars and Skittles. This year Zach polled his friends and reported that Kit Kat bars would be the most appreciated, so Michael bought sacks of those. Then, to add insult to injury, I always get the job of passing out this poison.

My usual costume consists of a surfer wig and Vulcan ears, so I am disguised as a Vulcan surfer ("Live long and prosper, dude!"). However, this year we couldn't find the ears. So I added a jack-o-lantern T-shirt. Michael provided a pendant for no obvious reason.

The final touches included a seasonal wreath (Michael decorates a wreath for every month of the year), a jack-o-lantern, and a fog machine except the fog machine was defective and instead of fog, merely spit out the "fog juice" we put into it. (That will be going back to the store next week.)

So then we were ready for our first urchins…er, customers.

From 6 PM to about 8 PM, most of our customers were adorable little ones who had little idea what the whole thing was about, though they seemed to enjoy dressing as princesses and super-heroes. There were also an unusual number of Dorothies this year; we always gave them a little extra candy.

One of our tombstones had a motion detector and, whenever anyone came near it or if there was even a nearby sound like that of a pebble falling, it would suddenly shout out, "Let me out of here! I'm not dead yet!" That sent more than one little one running back to the safety of waiting mom or dad at the sidewalk.

Our new neighborhood is chock full of kids and we ran through our candy in no time. I was all for Michael and me putting on masks and collecting some from the neighbors, but Michael made me instead hop in the car and pick up more. I got thelast three bags from Basha's.

By 8 PM the little kids were done and the teenagers began making the rounds. Zachary and Lane discovered that they could have more fun hiding in the bushes and jumping out at the trick-or-treaters than they ever did actually getting candy for themselves. It was on this basis that Zachary pronounced this "My best Halloween ever!!"

Finally, it was all over. Michael and I decided we deserved a little down time before bed so went to the gym to soak in the Jacuzzi for an hour or so. The temperature was so pleasant we actually drove back home with the windows down. As we approached the house, now nearly midnight, we could hear a voice yelling, "Let me out of here! I'm not dead yet!"

We had forgotten to turn off the tombstone.

I imagine the neighbors are now ready to kill us. Well, if they do, at least we have our tombstones ready.