Another Halloween has come and gone. Halloween is one of our kid’s favorite holidays; not just because of all the candy, but because of the traditions that come with it. We have several days of celebrating: pumpkin patch visits, trunk-or-treating at our church, school parties, Halloween movie nights. On Halloween night, we always throw a little party at our house before trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. Friends, family and neighbors all join us for a “spooky” potluck and then we take our massive group of kids around the block for candy.
We started this tradition years ago, before all of our little Joneses were even born! This is, by far, their favorite part of Halloween. A couple of years ago, I decided I wasn’t really up for all of the planning involved to put on a party that year. We [attempted to] convince our kids that we would have fun trying something new. We took them to a popular neighborhood in our community that really gets into the Halloween spirit. Everyone decorates their houses and some even put together a haunted house. Fun as it was, our kids preferred our traditional party with their friends. In fact, they were quite grumpy about the change of plans and protested, declaring,
“You cancelled the best part of Halloween!”
Needless to say, we haven’t made that mistake again. The truth is, it can be a little bit of work to pull a party together, but I really enjoy doing it! What I enjoy even more is the memories that the kids are creating.
Our Halloween party always starts with a potluck dinner. We host the party out in our front yard/garage/driveway. We always decorate our garage, putting up tarp or black plastic for background and setting up food tables inside. Most everyone brings a festive dish: deviled eggs made into spiders or eyeballs, “monster eye” meatballs, “mummy” dogs, meat and cheese “guts” platter…just to name a few favorites. My favorite thing to make is eyeball cookies, which I put in a jar for show!
We spend an hour or more visiting, eating, decorating Halloween cookies and the kids love to run around and play together. With all of the sugar they eat on Halloween, they need to run around and burn off some of that excess energy! Of course, Halloween isn’t complete without pictures. For some reason, I didn’t get as many pictures this year as I usually do. But here are a few.
Trick-or-treating can get a bit crazy. We usually break off into a few different groups. I ended up with what I called “the advance party”, ha ha. The boys were too excited and apparently afraid the houses were going to run out of candy, so they had to run from house to house. Then there were “the littles”; all the younger siblings whose little legs couldn’t keep up with the big kids. The older girls kind of did their own thing; they started out helping with the littles, and then eventually went on their own (still keeping close by).
Here’s a photo of our motley crew this year. There were a few kids missing from our group shot, but this is most of them. 
Halloween 2017 was a success! We all had a great time visiting and the kids got way too much candy.
Speaking of which…join me tomorrow for creative tips on how to manage the excess Halloween candy!
