Treat

Halloween was a blast yesterday. J and I started out the day by attending a fall festival put on by the town. It was geared towards toddler and preschoolers, so they had little games at their height levels, a small petting zoo (we got to touch a baby hedgehog!), a hayride, and a fire truck. Best of all-it was free! I am continuously impressed by all of the family oriented festivals we find in and around Austin. So much fun.

J pretends not to hear the firechief tell him it's time to get off the truck

We weren't sure what to expect on our block once evening arrived. In the past 6 years we have never had a trick or treater come to our door (that's what happens when you live in apartments) so we were ready! I planned for a bunch of trick or treaters because one of the neighbors said we would be swamped living on the corner. It didn't start out that way, but once things got rolling, we had a stream of kids and I was glad I bought that extra bag of candy at Costco. One of the houses a few doors down put on this massive UFO/alien production. They built a spaceship that hung over their driveway. They also built a gigantic treehouse like structure for the aliens, complete with glow in the dark heads, to land. They rigged up a speaker system and had alien music playing. When kids went up the driveway, they yelled things like, "Bring us the children. We want the candy...Load up the ship, clearly there is no intelligent life here." If I were a young child I probably would have been scared out of my gourd. It really was neat to hear all howls and screams from the kids as they attempted to trick or treat there! B said he wants to try to beat them next year. I have my doubts and think we should just aim to put up some decorations.

J visited a few houses with B as I handed out the loot. He tells me that J loved knocking on the door and saying, "Treat" to everyone. If they had something on their porch that talked, like a pumpkin or skeleton, he said, "no, no no". Poor kid has something against inanimate objects coming to life. I can't say I blame him. J also helped pass out some treats with me before headed to bed just a little later than usual. I thought the noise from the house down the street would keep him up, but it didn't.

There was no way we were keeping that lion head on him today, but he did still do a heck of a cowardly "roar".

I guess there is a Halloween curfew because all the noise stopped at 9:00 and we had one or two stragglers after that who got all of our leftover candy. They were pretty psyched by that. If Halloween was such a production, I'm really interested to see what people do for the Christmas season!