We can no longer call a get together at our house a party after a neighborhood party last Sunday. Our neighbors hosted about 40-45 people at their house for a Halloween party and they pulled out all the stops. First, they probably have the nicest house in town, so there’s plenty of room for the large amount of people at their house. They had the house all decorated including a zombie who can take his own head off. It started with a picture of all the kids on the stairway and then they moved the kids into the garage. They had set up tables for all the kids – one with pumpkins where the kids could color their own and the other table had make your own caramel apple materials. They cleared out their dining room table so they could put all the food in the buffet line – people were pretty creative with their dishes including deviled egg eyeballs.
Party #2 for Katie this week was at school on Wednesday. She wore her Snow White costume again and got to play with her friends there. One of her teachers was dressed up as a Tootsie Roll and gave candy out to all the kids.
Halloween night gave us the best weather we’d had in years. I usually man the house, but Becky said I could take out Snow White and Dora Mermaid this year. We started just before 6 even though it still light out. We walked to our friends, the Bakers, and they were heading out at the same time so we hit the first 16 houses together. We weaved our way back to our house then and found out that Becky hadn’t even handed out any candy by the time we got back. We drove to the Del Acres area to hit up a few friends, and it was crazy over there. People were three or four deep at each house as that’s the biggest congregation of kids and the houses are pretty close together. After stopping at 5-6 houses there we went to the elementary school to take part in the Lions sponsored event. The girls had fun and their favorite part was putting stickers on a pumpkin. We hit one more friends house on the way home and got home about 20 after 8. They were super-pumped with all the candy and all the fun they’d had.
Party #3 was a get together with our friends Uggie & Suzi and Brad & Kari at Brad & Kari’s place. The kids had a lot of fun playing together – they’ve come a long way since they were younger – the big three kids played by themselves pretty much all night. The three little ones did pretty well too – there were a few minutes when the 6 adults got to have a conversation. We ate food from Kari’s garden and the potatoes in particular were great. We also set our tree order for our lake property next year, and I started to regret that I’d signed up for digging 140 holes next spring.
Party #4 is going right now – a birthday party for Katie’s friend Thea from her preschool. She’s been looking forward to this ever since Thea stopped by last week to hand out the invitation. All the girls in Katie’s preschool are going, and when I dropped her off today it was amazing all the happy parents with this party today. It was a license for all the adults to have a free afternoon and all the kids were tickled by the opportunity to have a party together.
We got our first snow last Sunday, so it’s been a rollercoaster weather-wise lately – but when isn’t it here? I think I’ll try to get the Christmas lights over and done with today, so that will make me pretty happy when I see the other dads doing it when it’s -10.
Eric's space 