the heil family: halloween

We've always loved Halloween. It's my favorite holiday. We dressed up until we were into our 20's I think. Our first few years in this house before we had kids, Carl would dress up as something scary (a witch, a vampire, an old creepy man, and a scream guy) and he would scare the crap out of the kids in the neighborhood. It was so much fun. We would have people over, a kind of informal Halloween party, and just have fun watching the kids run screaming from our door. I laugh just thinking about it. The best year was the year of the witch. I wish I had a scanner so that I could put the picture in here. Carl put the witch from the Wizard of Oz to shame. He sat in our upstairs bedroom window and would cackle and talk to the kids as they were approaching. I'd answer the door and play dumb when the kids would ask me about the witch's voice they heard. Talking to the kids for 10 seconds would buy Carl just enough time to run downstairs and out the door at them or sometimes he'd go out the backdoor and sneak around to the front. I remember this one kid was trying to get away so fast that he fell on the grass and then was trying to crawl away quickly...hilarious. We tried not to do this to the really young kids of course. For a few years though, our house was the talk of the neighborhood and people couldn't wait to see what we came up with next. I had people asking me weeks in advance what Carl was going to be or do. That all stopped when we had kids. Our focus changed, we started trick-or-treating again instead of giving out candy and we also didn't want to scare the crap out of our own kids, just other peoples kids.

This year we had a fun week leading up to Halloween. The kids and myself met Connor's friend, mom and sister at Duffield's for the hayride and pumpkin picking. The rest of the week was spent making Connor's costume, which was all Carl. Connor and I had been out to every Halloween store around and couldn't find any costumes that he wanted to be. Carl came up with the idea of a homemade robot costume and did a great job with it. He got a lot of compliments and had so much fun wearing it. The day before Halloween was his school parade. And on Halloween, Carl actually got to take the night off from work (being a manager and having off on a Saturday night in the Casino business is pretty much unheard of). Grandpop and Mom Mom Petrilli came over for pizza and trick-or-treated with us.

Our neighbors always ask when we're going to start scaring again. It may be a year or two, but we will definitely be back.

Hayride at Duffield's