Candy Headquarters - VandyH20's

Happy Halloween!

I posted this on Halloween, but I'm writing the text the morning after so I can say that we got 78 candy seekers at our door last night. That is the most by a long shot. Can't say why - maybe it's the economy. No one has food and they have to go door to door seeking it, nutritional value be damned!

There are 3 "decorated" houses on our 9 house street, making this a cul-de-sac to definitely go down (in my opinion). The house across the street has lots of smoke coming from somewhere, eyeballs flashing in the bushes, a monster that pops up and loud spooky audio going for the duration (5:30 - 7:30 approx).

The house at the end of the cul de sac has lots of lights, a graveyard, a strobelight going on a dark spooky monster in the upstairs window of their house, and other stuff. Definitely the brightest and most elaborate display.

Then there's our house. A few lights; 2 fiber optic small scrawcow guys, and a small witch and cauldron that sits on a table covered with a black garbage bag by the front door and has flashing lights in the cauldron which puts out smoke. Now the kids have always liked this decoration and many times commented on it. We also have a witch door knocker that is movement activated so that as soon as kids come to the door it's eyes light up and it cackles "Happy Halloween". This does sometime scare kids but not in a bad way.

Frequently I will look out my side windows as the kids come to the door (we old people love Halloween; takes us back to when our kids were young and cute). A small brother and sister approached the smoking witch last night and looked at her gravely. Then they both slowly stuck their fingers into the cauldron and carefully lifted same finger, stuck them in their mouths and licked them. When I opened the door, I told them I thought they were pretty brave - what if that witch's cauldron (a word they were too young to even know) had poison in it. They said "yew" to that and agreed with me that then they would have been in trouble.

At any rate, trick=r-treater's are such a study in personality. The chatty, the shy, the polite, the ruthless, , the unhurried and the in-a-hurry, the beauties and the beasts. My son David called around 6:45 in an exhausted frenzy and said he had been hit with about 140 already, was out of candy, had turned off the lights and was hiding in the back of the house. He has a rather large prejudice about handing out candy to older kids who haven't bothered to dress up. Well, no wonder: this from a child who still goes to parties with his group who still love to dress up. When he told me that one year he had gone as the Jolly Green Giant, I sorely wished for a photo of that.

This was Mojo's first Halloween and he was totally in awe. It was a wonderfully mild evening, so Bill finally got a chair and parked himself and the Moj (on the leash) in the driveway since, well to be truthful, they were BOTH very interested to see everything. Bill once worked in a haunted house for the Jaycee's and still wants to jump out at people and yell boo. I told him if he was going to do that they had to be at least 12, effectively eliminating most of his shenanigans.

Oh yes, Bill said that the number of real spider webs we had around out front door was an effective addition to our decorations as well!