Happy Halloween!!

Well, another Halloween has come and gone, which only means Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner!

We had our 6th annual neighborhood Halloween party last night out in our outer garage last night. Den and I started it by thinking of a way to get together with our neighbors for a quick, easy meal before the rush of trick-or-treating, sorting candy, baths (if your lucky), homework and off to bed for school the next day. So, we started with inviting the neighbors on our street, we provide the hotdogs and soda, they bring appetizers/dessert and we eat buffet style. Den does an amazing job of decorating our woods that surrounds the garage with a haunted graveyard theme, complete with huge spiderwebs that come out off the garage, fog machine, a brewing witch kettle, and mounds our leaves into "graves" with tombstones. It's all in good fun for all the kids, no scaring allowed. The first few years we had some really cold Halloween's, and everyone huddled in the garage. Then, each year, I started inviting neighbors on the street over, a few in the back of the neighborhood, and a few of my close friends not even in the neighborhood. Well, 6 years later, we are now up to 37 families! Last night, we ran out of my 120 plates I had, and Den had to come in and rummage in the pantry for more--so I think we are easily at about 135-140 people! It is so much fun to see everyone--actually, it's like a "pre-hibernation" party for us Minnesotans, since we probably won't see much of them until Spring!

So, I bet your asking, where's the pictures of this?? WELLLLLLLLLL, I just created this blog site, the day AFTER Halloween, so I wasn't thinking how necessary it was for me to get pictures, so I will get some for next year--better yet, come join us!!! I've already got 3 more families getting added for next year, so why not, I'm already adding for more anyway!! :) Honestly, it does get pretty busy once everyone gets here, they stay for about 1 1/2 hours--once it starts getting dark, most everyone loads up on a trailer with/4 wheeler driven by their dad, and off they go trick-or-treating. By the time we think of taking a picture, we are in the middle of tearing it all down. UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So, next year I promise to get some pictures--for now, we are left with the leftovers of 8 various liters of half empty soda, 7 family sized bags of various chips, 1/2 gallon of leftover orange dreamsicle punch (by the way is packed with calories/fat but way to good to just toss, I just can't do it!), only about 16 hotdogs (which is quite good considering we started out with 120!) chili and onions. Guess what's for dinner?????