This year we really weren’t sure whether we were going to do a Halloween gathering or not… The holiday fell on a Wednesday, which is traditionally the worst day for trick or treating. Then, we started getting phone calls from friends wondering what they could bring. Apparently, it was a foregone conclusion to a lot of our friends that our annual Halloween festivities would be happening.

We’re so glad that we decided to do something, because even with the short planning phase we had things seemed to turn out great. We were glad to have everyone over who could make it and it was fun (as always) to go trick or treating with the kids and to hand out candy to the trick or treaters who stopped by.

It seems that every year we have a “Tony” story to tell about Halloween and this one was no different. This year, Tony dressed as a high school basketball coach from the late 70’s / early 80’s. His costume can only be described as… weird. Anyhow… As tradition would have it Tony ended up handing candy out to at least a few of the kids who showed up. His first group of kids showed up and as they waited for their candy Tony explained to them that they would need to run wind sprints in order to get anything. The kids, of course, weren’t taking him seriously right up until the point when he yelled “GO!” I don’t think Tony fully understood the ramifications of what he had done until the kid dressed as a ghost was half way down the driveway towards the street… The ghost costume was NOT designed for running and it was very, very obvious that the kid was about to face plant right in the middle of our driveway. Of course, Tony started yelling for them to stop and handed out the candy they had earned.

Beyond that we had some really, really cute kids come around. Most notably was a small girl dressed as a duck and a toddler dressed as a vampire, complete with a pacifier shaped like vampire fangs. Unfortunately we didn’t get pictures.

After the family types had loaded up and headed home, those of us without children hung out and watched several episodes of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” to cap off the night.

Thanks everyone for coming out, next year we are going to put a lot more planning into it and we plan to have an outright costume party. So go ahead and start figuring out how you’re going to dress up!

Tonight we made our annual pumpkin pilgrimage to our friends’ Dano and Pam’s house to once again test our abilities against the best in… Dano and Pam’s back yard.

As always, a great time was had, great food was eaten and many pumpkins realized their glorious destiny.

Melanie did the one in the top row, middle, which is the cat and pumpkin sitting in a window. Mine is the emoticon wink which is the second from the left which turned out to be an artist favorite but didn’t get much attention from the judges. Fortunately this year was the first year in which a recount wasn’t demanded by at least one of the competitors, so controversy was avoided altogether.

It was a great time and we have already started planning our pumpkins for next year!