We're THAT house

I got to Leon's classroom JUST as they were posing for the class picture!!!  YAY!  

He was very relieved to see me...

And the treats were so good!!!  The teacher let the grownups hit the treats after the kids went through.

During the parade, Leon held my hand and I walked through with him.  I have a feeling, he won't be so cool about it next year...  Because he'll just BE too cool to hold hands with Grandma.

But for now, he's still just a 7 year old who loves his G'ma.

 We stopped by Ada's at the nursing home to trick or treat there before heading home to get prepped for the evening.

I managed to cut and hang several yards of cheese cloth and tied it out onto the trees and fence.  It was a mad rush but I had it done in 10 minutes.  Leon was impressed and said we didn't have to find the spider webbing that I thought we had in the house...

We hung up a few bats and Leon and I found the materials to make a spider.

Body = bag of pop cans from garage

Head = exercise ball in a garbage bag

Legs and fangs = Christmas light yard spikes. (they're subtle.)

Eyes - package paper with the red and black drawn on with marker and then a tiny light for the center.

It went together super fast and if you looked too close you could see why.

People did see it for the spider that it is.

Our work here is done.

 Then we built the fire in the fire pit.  I have been chipping away at a tree stump for a few weeks and saving the chips in a bucket for such a purpose.  They worked like a charm as tinder!  So with only one paper grocery sack, the tinder on top of that and a few slices of table centerpiece wood slices AND the same old log I've been working on for five years, we had a great little fire!

Probably 95% of the parents (mostly dads) that walked up with their kids said, "Now THAT is a great idea!!!"

Yep - heard that before!  Probably from them last year.

Some teenagers hung out and warmed themselves on it until they realized they'd have to talk to us.

Before the trick or treating really got going, I caught Leon making shadow puppets on the garage wall.  Hey Grandma, what's this?

Leon and his dad did the rounds themselves and Leon described it as, "We went to the very end of this road, then walked that way and went through a field and back to that road down there!"

You went through a field?!

They made memories.  and got lots of candy!

I asked him which house had the neatest candy and/or decor.  Apparently one house won Halloween.

They had a bouncy house for the kids to jump in and gave out mini donut packs to each kid.

That just seems like they were trying too hard...  BUT the most memorable house I remember when my kids were young was the one where they gave away a can of pop!  The dad worked for a pop place and got it all cheap.  

When I was young, the neatest one was a spooky house with huge overgrown pine trees near the entrance of the yard.  The teenage boys who lived there would grab out of the trees at you as you walked past and if you were brave enough to get past the trees, their mom was dressed like a witch and cackling on the porch over a cauldron full of candy.  From what I heard, she lost her voice for a good long while every year after Halloween.

Anyway, Leon sat with me by the fire and harrassed the trick or treaters...

"So... you're BOTH Unicorns? hmmm"

or

"You can only take 1 or TWO pieces of candy!!!" *thanks... they took two...

or he'd hide and run up behind the kids and spook them.

sigh...

sit down...

Meri came over around 7:30.  She'd only had a few trick or treaters at her house.  I guess the houses are closer together on my street so it's popular.  But she had to get to play practice so she didn't stay long.  AND I forgot to get her some of the leftover chili!  shoot.  Will make a point later to get that ready for her.

Finally at 8, Leon helped me move all the chairs and pumpkins to the porch and pour water over the fire.

Good time and I'm totally ready to put up the tree now.

JUST KIDDING!!!!

BUT I did pull out the freaky pilgrim people for the porch.