Our Halloween

Next to Christmas, Halloween is my FAVORITE holiday. Since Halloween fell on a Wednesday this year, I knew I would be out of town for this most hallowed eve. (I was very distraught about that, but what are ya gonna do?)

Knowing that I would be gone, I had to plan well in advance for all of our Halloween activities. Costumes were bought a good 5 weeks in advance. Halloween treat bags and cards for friends, family, and classmates were assembled three weeks ahead of time. One weekend we picked pumpkins, the weekend before Halloween we carved them, then came the subdivision Halloween parade…in our new subdivision.

We have thoroughly enjoyed the annual costume parade that the subdivision we moved from always had, so we decided to attend (OK, partially organize) a Halloween parade in our new subdivision.

This new parade was fine, but different and new, and well different. We had a “guess how many candy corns are in the glass pumpkin jar” contest. There was a costume contest where a secret judge picked their favorite funny, scary, and overall best costumes. And an Oakland County sheriff came and talked to the kids about trick-or-treat safety. The kids even got to sit in the back of the police cruiser (not a place I ever want to see my kids again).

It certainly wasn’t exactly the same as the parade we were used to and had grown to love over the past 7 years. For example, we walked on the sidewalk instead of the street. There weren’t many spectators, and there were no donuts and cider at the end of the parade. Jordyn was very disappointed that there were no kids her age that participated. And it was cold, not to mention we were under dressed and the kids kept begging to leave (not to be blamed on the new subdivision).

But it’s always fun to see the kids’ costumes in the daylight (even if I only knew a handful of the kids that were there as opposed to knowing almost all of them like in years past). It sounds as if I’m complaining, and I guess I am a little, it’ll take time to get used to this new subdivision’s dynamics and traditions.

And since our section of the subdivision is still so new, we figured that 1. we wouldn’t get many trick-or-treaters and 2. the kids would have more fun in a more developed, established, and familiar neighborhood. So, Kev took the boys trick-or-treating in the old subdivision. With me out of town, it was so nice for Kev to have someplace familiar to take the boys and he was able to walk around with a beverage in hand with our dear friends Amy & Joel and their boys. I wasn’t there, but reading Mindy’s blog about that night in my old sub, made me feel like I was.

Here’s hoping I’ll be home next year ON Halloween (where we’ll probably trick-or-treat in the old subdivision again!)