All of the holidays are special times for us and Halloween is no exception. Anytime we can access our inner child, we jump at the chance. Frank & I worked hard on the house decor the weekend before Halloween, however a torrential storm came in on Monday & took out most of what we had done. With a rainy forecast for the week, we didn’t want to do more and have to redo & redo & redo. So we picked up the rest and waited for All Hallows Eve to finish decorating. On Halloween, Frank worked all day on the display, while I worked until 4pm. The majority of this was done the last 2 hours before the first victims arrived.

Our neighbor, 2 doors down has had the best free Halloween display in all of Jacksonville for the past 10 years. He sold his house this year & moved out of town. We usually had between 200-300 kids who trick-or-treat in our neighborhood because our neighbor would blast our haunted houses on social media, Halloween forums and run ads on Craigslist. We missed him this year and so did the rest of the neighbors and hordes of trick or treaters.

All that being said, we had an awesome Halloween. We had visits from Godzilla, T-Rex, Men in Black, Wonder Woman, The Frozen Cast, Batman, Lady Bug, Minnie Mouse, Dorothy, Spiderman & many ghouls & zombies. Total, we had 190 trick-or-treaters from age 1-18 years old. If you count the parents, we were well over 250 visitors. Many of whom mentioned how much they enjoyed and appreciated how we decorated for the occasion.

We love the decorating & the occasional spook. A few years ago, my hubby put on this mask that was really scary with a lot of scarring. This little blond headed girl, about 3 or 4 years old, came up to him and said, “what happened to your face?”, in this really sweet voice. He told her he had an “owie”. She looked up at him and said, “can I give you a hug?”. It was by far one of the sweetest moments ever! He gave her a big hug & she went on her candy collecting way.

Every year we set up our version of a “Halloween family” photo booth for the parents & kids to take selfies. It’s always quite popular. This isn’t just about getting candy! It’s about sharing a night that kids look forward to every year. If the decor is not enough, I lure them into my spider web with lots of good candy. Left overs, come to me in the end.

2019 – Wednesday Addams – I stayed in character the entire day at work, but because of the heat, I was down to my skeleton t-shirt & shorts for the evening trick-or-treaters. It was still 80 F (26.66 C) at 8pm.

If you didn’t read “Why I Love Halloween” & see the past 5 year preview of my quirky costumes, you can check it out here.