Halloweenies

Am I going nuts, or has Halloween blossomed into a massive extravaganza of a holiday? It is no longer just a kids' holiday: it is a giant inflatable lawn ornament and porch-decorating holiday and a college student binge-drinking holiday, too. (In fact, ISU has moved parents' weekend to coincide with Halloween to keep the undergrads under control.)

This year costumes went on sale at the beginning of September and all of the good ones were sold out before October. I think that the idea is that if you buy costumes in advance, the kids will change their minds or ruin the costume in the intervening two months and you will have to buy another one. I tried to sell the kids on home-made costumes, but no dice. This is the first year that no one needed for me to sew them anything elaborate. Snif. Sam wanted to be Iron Man and Joseph wanted to be Darth Vader, so I bought costumes in September and stuck them in the closet for safety. Is it just me, or does Joseph look like Dark Helmet from Spaceballs?

We went to the annual Halloween Planetarium show (for a detailed description, read last year's post). Soooo corny... I was chatting with the fellow who runs the planetarium the other day and I had an epiphany--he records the cheesy audio tracks for the shows!!!

Normal has the annual Uptown Normal Treat Fest for kids to go from store to store and get candy (and coupons--what every kid wants!) But this year was insane--there were just too many people for the length of the street, so that everyone ended up gridlocked and unable to move forward, even though there was plenty of candy (and coupons!) We eventually gave up and stopped for dinner.

Joseph's school has a Halloween parade, which Danny attended. Sam's school also has a "Halloween walk-a-thon" which we didn't see.

Darth Vader makes a skeleton out of Q-tips.


After we went to the Harvest Festival, Sam asked if we could make a scarecrow. So we dipped into the discarded clothes collection, and stuffed them with plastic bags (the ones that I can't use for crocheting). However, the day before Halloween, it was (not surprisingly) stolen off of our porch. So we made another one for Halloween. Sam helped stuff it and Joseph made the mask.

Our neighborhood is awesome for trick-or-treating! There are loads of older neighbors who recall Halloween nostalgically, and stuff handfuls of candy into the kids' bags. Our neighbors also do this awesome haunted yard. Sam was a little freaked out, but Joseph spent a long time examining each of the corpses and ghouls.

We left a big bowl of candy on the porch and when we got back from trick-or-treating, although it looks like some kids helped themselves the bowl was still there! And the biggest surprise--after Halloween weekend, the scarecrow is still there, and the pumpkins haven't been smashed!