Halloween 2008

On Halloween Eve, on the way to meet my sister, niece and the cousins, Alison posited the following:

"Mommy, do you think we should have picked up my costume before tonight? What if it doesn't fit or something is wrong?"

Now this would be a perfectly reasonable question if A.) we weren't talking about Dona and B.) she didn't have a flawless track record.

"Alison Reed! In six years, has your Aunt Donna ever done you wrong?"

She pondered. "No, but....."

So we pick up the costume and have a wonderful dinner. On the way home, I asked Ali if she thought Donna had done OK this year.

"Oh, Mommy. It's the best costume I've ever seen in my whole life," she said. "It's better than anything she's ever done before."

She's been bragging about her costume ever since. And I can't blame her. Every year, we think it can't be a better outfit, yet it always is. I'm including two shots of the outfit so you can see the detail. The spiderwebbing put it over the top.

We had a great Halloween. The centerpiece was the performance of Alex Vielee who climbed inside a wooden crate, stayed silent until they got close enough to reach for the candy on top and then yelled and jumped until they screamed. My neighbor is still shaking after we sent her to the box to get some candy and Alex scared the bejesus out of her. Frankly, he scared me more when he showed up in a John McCain mask -- but that would scare anyone.

John, Jeff and most of the kids were responsible for the decor, spreading spider webs and bugs, rats and creepy stuff. They even rigged up a spider they would drop on people as they wandered around the yard. Lisa and I worked in the kitchen getting the Table of Terror and the food set up. Our cupcakes may not have looked exactly like the magazine, but they were pretty good.

The Table of Terror -- Alison's concept thanks to Geronimo Stilton -- was a hit with the smaller kids. Expecially when John and Jeff went through it.

We had pretty much eviscerated a witch to develop the terrors. We had bowls of her eyeballs, her guts, her brains and her fingernails, along with a bucket of blood. To get through the challenge, you had to dig deep into each one while blindfolded. The real winners munched on an eyeball before ripping off the blindfold.

There was an unfortunate incident when some of the witch's eyes inadvertently got spattered on Helen, but overall, we had more shrieks of fun fear than real terror. Out front in the box, we did scare the fluid out of one little boy, but we'd warned his father, so any nightmares that ensued are on that guy.

Hope you had a great time, too. See below for the entire crew. And a look back at costumes past.