Our Halloween

This was our first Halloween in the new house, which meant big business! Unlike the last two houses we lived in, where we never had a trick-or-treater, our new house is located one block from the epicenter of all things Halloween in our area. And we were THRILLED about this. The previous owners of the house told us we could put lights up and expect kids, or turn them out and have no commitment. That's all they said. Never did they mention that if we DID choose to put lights up, we should also have a bathtub full of candy ready to go because 1,000 trick-or-treaters is the rule-of-thumb in this neighborhood. No, there was no mention of that. 

So we naively decorated as BIG as we could, invited a few friends over for pizza, and hoped and prayed we'd get some cute kids in costume walking up our driveway. Thankfully, our incredibly talented photographer friend had his new camera handy and captured all these great images.

The grandmas in charge of passing out candy at the door. At 5pm exactly, before we'd even put our own dinner in the oven, we got our first trick-or-treaters. And from then on, it was total mayhem until 6pm, by which time we'd already run out of candy, raided our pantry for snack packets, thrown in a handful of gifty glow bracelets to the bucket, and run to the corner liquor store for three boxes of lollipops. At 6:01, we threw in the towel, turned all the lights off and hit the street with our own kids. I wish I had pictures of some of our neighbors houses. Some of them went to such incredible lengths to entertain everyone with the *eye candy*. When we got home friends, we all sat around brainstorming our plan for next year. Knowing what we know now, we absolutely can not wait to make the most of our favorite holiday!