So, there we have it.
The first Halloween in the new house is in the books. It sure didn’t start out very promising. It pissed down rain, almost in deluge format
from 5:00 AM until 5:00 PM and it wasn’t looking good for the trick or
treaters. Then almost on cue at 5:00 PM
it stopped raining and turned into a relatively pleasant evening for the little
kiddies, and us big kiddies.
DECORATIONS |
ANIMATED PUMPKIN FACES |
BACK DECK DECORATIONS |
Unfortunately, I could not put out some of the animated
stuff until the last minute. It took me
awhile to get the projector set up with the three pumpkins, but it worked
perfectly. It’s too bad that the way I
had it set up, it couldn’t be seen from the street. But the main thing is that it worked and it
was a lesson for next year. It took a
while to get it working perfectly and so I was crunched for time.
I filled the fog machine and put it out to warm up, and it
was too bad that I hurried it, because I could not get it working under any
circumstances. It was only afterwards
when I was packing up that I discovered that the intake hose had a plug in it
for transport. Had I removed it I’m sure
it would have worked perfectly. But that
was the only glitch on the night.
Well there was one other when Renee closed the screen door
and I didn’t know and just about walked through it. Luckily, or maybe not, I bounced off it. But, man it hurt. I did manage to remain upright, but it’s like
skating g with your head down and that big defenseman comes across the ice to
take your head off.
ANGEL |
OLD DUDE |
COME TO ME MY CHILDREN |
Renee dressed up as an angel and then later tossed on an old
man mask and caught me completely by surprise.
It worked well with her costume.
I had not planned on dressing up, but I got into the spirit of it
anyway. It was just something I had
lying around. I debated wearing my
Canucks uniform or even wearing my old police dress uniform.
Instead, I had bought a camouflage Ghillie suit (aka a
sniper suit) last summer with the plan of using it for wildlife
photography. I never did get around to
use it, because my sidekick Toby would give me away anyway. So, I threw it on and was amazed by the
number of compliments I got from parents walking with their kids. I was even more shocked when an 8-year-old
boy said to his Dad, “Hey Dad, he has a Ghillie Suit”. Most people don’t know what it is, let alone
what it’s called. Even on a cool night,
it was hot in that thing.
GHILLIE SUIT GHOUL |
BOO |
The weather held off all evening and there were lots of kids
patrolling the neighbourhood. We ended
up with close to 50 kids and used up more than half of the candy in the
bowl. There’s still some left for us
though. It was great to see that many
kids around, as last year in East Vancouver, my neighbour had less than 10
kids. This was more like the days when I
was young, although, then my Mom used to get over 200.
Since the complex isn’t even half constructed or full yet,
we weren’t expecting too much. But it
was way better than expected. We had
close to 50 trick ort treaters and once everything is occupied by next year, it
should be a great turn-out. Still, it
was an awesome evening and it felt like being a kid again.
GOODIE BOWL |
MY JACK-O-LANTERN |
RENEE'S JACK-O-LANTERN |
I learned some lessons about setting up decorations and next
year I will be better prepared. Or at
least I hope I will. Having it rain all
day though, limited my options. Maybe
next year the weather will be better.
One can always hope.
The other thing that was great, is that the fireworks were
very limited and much farther away, so Toby wasn’t panicked. With the park across the street from the old
house, the fireworks were constant from 9:00 PM to 2:00 AM. Tonight, the fireworks, even in the distance
were done before 10:00 PM and Toby wasn’t freaked out at all tonight.
Hurray for Halloween and already looking forward to next
year. The next big project will be
Christmas decorations. Going to have to
get lights for the front door and the back deck. I’ll even think about doing the windows and
getting a tree. I just must decide on
real or artificial.