Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Keeping Up With the Joneses


Halloween. Always a fun filled season of gluttonous abandon. I thoroughly enjoy the parties, the costumes, the trick-or-treating, and of course the candy, oh the candy. It is all good stuff. However, I have never been a big Halloween decorator. I am not sure why, but we usually keep it simple, a few carved pumpkins, and if I am feeling really festive, a spiderweb or two. That is about it.

So this year being pretty much like all the others, I purchased two good sized pumpkins for our front porch. Now, I admit, we didn't even carve them this year (I am not big on messy), but we did "decorate" them with these cute plastic faces. Think Mr. Potato head parts for a pumpkin. Halloween day, I went to put them outside, and I noticed that our next door neighbor seemed to have the beginnings of something in their front yard. I plopped my pumpkins down and went inside. Later, I went out to walk Ruby, and lo and behold, more stuff, was accumulating. It wasn't anything the seemed Hallowenish yet. It was like fence parts and ropes and stuff. Hmmmm. Throughout the day, I would peek out the window to spy on my neighbors. What were they doing over there?

By late afternoon, it was taking shape. There was all kinds of stuff, a creepy Hannibal Lecter guy, a huge spiderweb (ginormous hairy spider included), lights, a smoke machine for goodness sake! This was just what I could see from the privacy of my master bedroom window.

In Page, trick-or-treating takes place much earlier than most places, 4-6pm. My younger two kids arrived home from school expecting to don their costumes and zoom out the door as they have done for as long as they can remember. I told them that we had to wait until dark here, and we tried to find ways to keep busy for the next few hours. When Corbin got home about an hour later, he reported that the neighbors had basically transformed their front yard into Halloween Mecca.

I decided to go out and chat with the neighbors(code for ogle their fantastical creations). What I hadn't been able to see from my window was a complete rock band of life sized animatronic skeletons complete with full-on sound system, the graveyard with pop up frightful creatures, and a second hairy spider that my neighbor graciously demonstrated its ability to lower from the trees above onto unsuspecting visitors checking out the aforementioned skeleton band (yes, I shrieked a little).

After admiring their spooky spectacle, I returned home to gather my waiting trick-or-treaters. Walking up my front walk, I was greeted by my two sad little pathetic pumpkins with their Mr. Potato head-esk faces. I wish the pictures I took did justice to the contrast. I am thinking next year, we need to step up our game.

No matter what the house lacks, the trick-or-treaters look AWESOME!





The Rolling Bones

1 comment:

  1. I miss Halloween in Page every year... I love the pumpkins!

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