Halloween at the Newmans

Sorry about the late post, we've just been so busy patching up walls that I forgot to update our friends and family about our progress.

I didn't grow up celebrating Halloween. My dad says now that he didn't like the idea of kids knocking on doors and feeling entitled to receive candy, but the story he told us when we were young had more to do with feeling unsafe in our neighborhood. We also sometimes got lectured about halloween being the devil's holiday, but I think it was more fear for our safety that took us out of the city or to a movie theater that one day each year. When we finally moved to a neighborhood where my parents weren't worried about us playing in the street, the relaxed halloween rules felt late. We were getting too old to trick or treat. 

Despite Halloween not being a formative part of my childhood, I still love the holiday. I am not good about getting costumes together or creating macabre scenes in our front yard, but there's something about the sense of community and childhood innocence that I really love about the last day in October. Our house is still a long way from being finished, but I took the opportunity of finally having our own home to throw my first ever pumpkin carving party! It rained all day and was unsafe for all invited to drive to our house, but we had such a blast with the few friends that were able to safely join us that evening. While we will most definitely be carving pumpkins again in the future, I did learn that a week before Halloween is too long a time to leave pumpkins on the porch to rot.

While Halloween was never a part of my childhood, I was still aware of the fabled house that gave away full-sized candy bars and decided that I want to be that house. I put out a call on Facebook to find friends with warehouse club memberships and was super pleased to find that I had at least a few friends with either Sam's or Costco memberships. I met with the wonderful Jenni a few days before Halloween, purchased 120 candy bars at a fraction it would have cost me elsewhere, and started what I hope will be a tradition seeing kids seeking my house out each year.

I ended up getting ahead of myself with the amount of candy I purchased since it rained all day in Texas, but we made an impression on the kids that did make the candy trek and hope that they tell their friends of a fabled house on the top of a hill that lets goblins and ghouls grab handfuls of full-size bars. We started small this year, but hope to see the amount of kids visiting our house grow as the years pass.

The Halloween rain had a surprising perk in that it created the perfect backdrop for our alligator great dane.