Halloween Pictures (Finally!)

Finally got around to transferring, editing, and uploading the photos from the different Halloween activities this year.

First up, we have the trunk or treat at our church. We joined up with a friend of ours and her family and came as the characters from Clue. Those of us that weren't characters from the game wore a weapon on the front and a room on the back. It was a lot of fun building the costumes. The payoff was a little more disappointing. The group costume competition at our church is generally pretty fierce, especially between the Waltons (our allies this year) and the Beatty's. However, for the double whammy this year, the Beatty's couldn't make it, and there was no group category. Ah well, the kids had fun anyway.

Next up, we have the 8th Annual Hawks Halloween Party. We had a really good turnout this year with four other families attending. The Waltons were coming, so we all donned our Clue outfits, only to find that there was a little miscommunication and they had decided to come in individual costumes. With less than half of the Clue board represented, our costumes needed quite a bit of explanation. We really slacked off on the pictures this year. I didn't even get a good one of the food spread. The funnest part was using dry ice on our blood and eyeball punch. What I didn't realize is that putting more dry ice in after the bubbles died down would eventually freeze the punch. We had punch-encased chunks of dry ice fused to the bottom of the bowl by the time I was done. Good times. Anyway, the bulk of the pictures were of the apple bobbing, a mainstay of our annual festivities.

Here we have Zoe's costume for her preschool's Bible-themed costume party.

And last we have the girls all dressed up before attacking the neighborhood in some good old fashioned candy extortion.

I was very disappointed in our neighborhood this year. About half of the houses with exterior lights on, the traditional "I'm-giving-out-candy" symbol, didn't answer the door or didn't have candy. Even those were few and far between. The only reason the girls filled their buckets was because everyone was handing out handfuls of candy. They seemed to pick up on the other disappointing trend, a marked decrease in the amount of trick-or-treaters. Last year we had almost 200 kids raid our candy. This year we didn't even get a fourth of that. I'm wondering if it's a cultural thing. One of the houses we stopped at had their lights on, but there was a nice hispanic lady leaving. She nodded to us and directed us to the door, so we figured candy awaited. After waiting for a few moments, a hispanic gentleman came around the corner of the townhouse complex bearing fast food. It looked like he just made a food run. He stuttered out, "Ah! Halloween! Uh, no, uh, candy! Wait, wait, wait!" as he started rooting around in his pockets. I was about to usher the girls away, wanting no part of whatever candy he had stashed there, when I saw what he retrieved. He had a wad of $1 bills, off of which he peeled three notes for my girls. I told him he didn't have to do it, but he insisted. Whether or not the candy was a cultural thing, I'll say this, that was a durn nice thing for him to do.

Anyway, I'm going to get these up on Facebook, too. You should be able to get to larger versions of the pictures by clicking somewhere in the slideshows if you want copies for yourself (I'm looking your way, Mom.) If any of you want originals, let me know in email.

Halloween Treats, MerlinTWizard Style

Here are the pictures of some of the treats we served at our annual Halloween party. These are what kept me up until 2:00 AM that morning. They were worth it, though.



Here's a shot of me as a pirate, yarr and all that.

MerlinTWizard Annual Halloween Party

We celebrated Halloween in full swing this year - in November. Meh, The Saturday after Halloween was the only one we could get that close to the actual day that wasn't already booked. Still, I think the Hawks Annual Halloween Party was the best this year than ever.

Our decorations were out in full force, including the big, inflatable, knife-wielding maniac and giant inflatable spider in our front yard as well as the cryptacular stone wall facades inside. Stacy and I would love to go scarier for Halloween, but we've found that our little girls are too sensitive to have much more than the walls and the inflatables. Maybe when they're older.

Stacy and I did the pirate thing this year (pics to come) while our girls rocked the princess costumes for the fourth time this month. We had plenty of guests: Creepy Hooded Axe Wielder, Knock Off Wolverine, Princess Ariel, Capt. Jack Sparrow (x2!), Tigger, Tow Mater, Peter Pan, and my personal favorite, Hank Venture.

Refreshments were suitably ghoulish, with skulls (white-chocolate-coated pears with candy eyes and frosting mouths), eyeballs (cherries embedded in lychees floating in red punch), owl eyes (sugar cookie center, chocolate cookie ring with candy eyes and cashew noses), a slimy caterpillar (cupcakes frosted orange lined in a curve with candy decorations and green licorice legs), and witch hats (croissant calzones folded into the shape and served with pizza sauce.) Of course, we had candy and treats galore as well. I don't think anyone went home hungry.

Since we had so many kids attend, we aimed the party more towards their level with some fun games. We did a Halloween version of Who Am I, the game where you have a picture taped to your back and must rely on other's hints to figure out who it is (witches, werewolves, cowboys, pirates, princesses, etc.) We had a candy hunt with miniature candy-filled Darth Vader heads and bags of Teddy Grahams. The adults joined in on a game of Pumpkin Relay where two teams lined up and passed a pumpkin over the head or under the legs, ending when the last person in line reached the front and the pumpkin reached the back. We finished off the games with one of my favorites, Plop the Wart on the Witch. We give the kids a little ball of white sticky tack, blindfold them, spin them around, and then send them towards the witch on the wall to do their worst. She had quite a few warts that somehow made it on the outside of her hat.

Stacy and I figure that we'll gear the party more towards the adults when our kids get older. For now, we're having a great time showing them a great time. Thank you to those of you that attended, and those that didn't, we'll be doing it again next year. What are you going to wear?

Another Great Halloween

We saw quite a few trick or treaters this year. For the second year in a row, we handed out glow bracelets along with our candy. By the end of the night, we figured we had passed out a little over 100. Not a bad turn out.

I was very disappointed in the lack of decoration around our neighborhood. Our old nemesis in the HOA decorating contest had nary a thing. A new neighbor across the way went even farther than us, though. I have to tip my pirate cap at them for their effort. The yard looked great. They went for the spooky scary Halloween compared to our more harmless and fun decorations. One of these days when my daughters don't get nightmares from listening to an animatronic head in a globe, we may go spooky too.

It seems that Halloween decorations and costumes have gone waaaay downhill from my halcyon youth. I remember entire neighborhoods decorated with cobwebs, strobe lights, creepy music, and people hiding all over the place, just waiting to trigger juvenile cardiac arrests. Ah, those were the days. Of course, I also remember rushing from one house to the next in a desperate attempt to get as much candy as possible (how do you think I cultivated my lithe physique?) so the decorations were probably largely lost on me. Maybe it doesn't matter. Is it all about the candy?

My children certainly didn't suffer this year. Consider this, they first went trick-or-treating at the beginning of the month at Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party in Disney World. Then, last Friday, they got more candy at Vicki's kindergarten/1st grade school party. The next day, we took them to our church's trunk-or-treat, a miniature version of trick-or-treat out of the back of (mostly) decorated car trunks in the parking lot of our church. Of course, there was the booty from last night's circuit around the neighborhood. Finally, our own yearly Halloween party is this coming Saturday, complete with even more candy.

Dear Pediatric Dentist,

You're welcome.

Scott

I hope you had a happy Halloween yourself. I'll make sure we take plenty of pictures Saturday and get them uploaded. I finally chose a pirate costume this year. It may become my standby. Heck, maybe I'll incorporate it into my everyday wardrobe!

Belated Halloween Pictures

Wow, it only took me 10 days to get Halloween pictures up! Thanks, Stacy! Now if only I could get the Disney World pictures online. You can click on any of these images to see the full picture.

Here's our second-place-winning yard. It is much more impressive in the dark, but the pics without the flash are blurry:

From left: Vicki as Princess Peach Toadstool, Stacy as Luigi, Zoe as Princess Daisy Toadstool, Scott as Mario, and Scarlett as Toad, the toadstool retainer.


From left: Casey as Dick Butkus, Kylie as a Bears Cheerleader, Traven as a Bears Linebacker, and Jamie as, well, I'm not sure what she's dressed as. Hmmm, that's a toughie.



From left: Vince as a Blue Man

And to finish off:
Scarlett as the Frosting Fiend!

Shakes Fist in Impotent Rage

Dammit.

We didn’t win 1st place in the Halloween decorating contest. I’m a little miffed since we spent quite a bit of time, effort, and money decking out our lawn. We had two giant inflatables: an 8’ purple spider complete with lights and a 5’+ tall globe featuring a lunatic with a knife and a cloud of swirling bats. That’s just the beginning! We had:

• green webbing spanning the front wall lit with a black light
• a cackling, light-up skeleton hanging from the tree
• a black cat staring at the hanging skeleton
• a skeleton breaking out of the ground with a light-up skull
• webbing stretching from the tree to the lamppost and all over the front bushes
• black lights in the lamppost and the front porch light
• headstones with witty sayings

and the piece de resistance,

• a machine that spewed fog from underneath the purple spider.

Oh, and numerous small pumpkins gutted by local squirrels, which were almost better than carved jack-o-lanterns. While the effect was cool, it was even funnier to watch Stacy driven to even higher throes of squirrelcide fantasies as she chased them away daily.

I’ll post a link to the HOA Web site once they have the pics of the contenders up. We took 2nd place to our house-decorating nemesis from down the street. They have a nice yard to begin with, but this year they used ghosts, a misting birdbath, a portable flaming brazier, and no less than 13 carved jack-o-lanterns. Apparently, the jack-o-lanterns put them over the top. If that’s what it takes, I’ll be carving pumpkins like mad next year, dammit.

Does anyone have the number to some good pumpkin smashers? Oooh, maybe I can transplant some of our pumpkin-hungry squirrels into their yard.

Fade out to sound of maniacal laughter.