This was a fun and memorable Halloween. First, we ran to the Grocery store to pick up a pumpkin to carve for Crystal at the last second. Then we headed over to Lisa's parents house to get ready for Halloween night. We got Crystal dressed up in her bumblebee outfit, and then Lisa carved the pumpkin for Crystal. Crystal got to watch and really enjoyed it. Once it was carved, she immediately played with it, and looked for things to hide in it. After that was done, we immediately started helping Lisa's dad for the preparations in the scare fest, that was to follow in the front yard. For those who don't know, Lisa's parents go all out for Halloween. There are all kinds of gross and scary things on display in the front yard, from impaled heads, to bloody corpses on nooses. The real fun, however, is on Halloween night, when all the men in the family along with some of the neighbor boys, participate in scaring any brave trick or treaters who come to the door. On Halloween, all these boys replace the dummies in the front yard with themselves, and jump out and chase children all over the yard. They had smoke machines, strobe lights, sound effects, and a professional amplifier with a microphone where Lisa's dad would scare the children with his evil laugh when they would try and ring the doorbell. Lisa's brother, Matt, would be posing as a corpse in a coffin, that was also on display in the front yard and pop out at anyone who came near. He asked Lisa to do his makeup. Lisa used some latex, fake skin, oil paint and fake blood to makeup his face and it took a couple of hours, but looked great. In the meantime, Scott got dressed up in an extremely scary Devil Costume to pose as a statue at the front door, opposite the witch statue that Lisa made with her mom which was pictured in an older post. Crystal is afraid of the devil costume, so we had to hide her with grandma where she watched beauty and the beast, while he got dressed up in it. Anyway, when kids were getting close to the door, Scott would break his statue pose and try to grab them, which was usually a huge shock as you can imagine. He made many children cry this year. Jared and Mike, (Lisa's two other brothers) were also dressed in scary costumes and mingled themselves in with the display to scare the children. As sneaky as it was, it's also a little funny to watch little batman see a dummy come to life, and turn and run down the street as fast as he can without looking back. All the kids who were brave enough to make it to the doorbell were rewarded with king sized candy bars, and large packets of skittles. The really little kids that made it, got the most candy since they were so brave. So we did try and make it worthwhile for them. Every year, the whole neighborhood looks forward to the scare display in the front yard at Lisa's parents house. There were a lot of groups that came this year...so many in fact that it took nearly an hour longer than other years to shut down. Obviously the parents who had sensitive children knew not to bring them to the house, but it's a lot of fun for the kids who want to see how brave they are. During all the scaring, Lisa took Crystal around the block to go trick or treating for the first time. Crystal took to it like a duck to water. The only problem was that instead of saying "trick or treat" she'd say "More candy?" when people would open the door. After they would close the door she'd look up at Lisa and say "Nother house?" She got so used to this routine that sometimes she would embarrass Lisa when a neighbor would take out the candy by digging both of her little fists in the bowl and trying to pull out as much candy as possible to stuff in her bag. After trick or treating, we went back to the house (the scarer's kindly stopped scarring long enough to let us in the house) and crystal got out of her costume, and immediately went through her bag of candy, unwrapped all the suckers, and made a sucker bouquet to lick as she toddled around the house. Lucky for us, Crystal doesn't really like candy, and after a few licks gets bored and gives up. Crystal would take a plate of broccoli any day over a cookie. We have no problem with that, and as a result, don't really have candy at home, so we don't know what we're going to do with it all. So far, she's just been laying it all out and organizing it into little piles...but once again, won't eat it, which is perfectly fine with us. When the boys finally shut down the haunted front yard, we sang happy birthday to Lisa's mom, who's birthday is on Halloween, and we all had some cake. Everyone enjoyed themselves this year.
