Thursday, October 29, 2009

Halloween Memories

For my Halloween post, I thought I’d share my favorite Halloween memories from my childhood. There are two things that really stand out. The first was going trick-or-treating with my best friend. She came to my house to go in my neighborhood every year because her house wasn’t in a development. We’d always be giggling the whole time and then, at the end of the night, we’d pour all our candy out on the living room floor, and go through it all and trade. There are photos from nearly every year of my childhood in one of my mother’s photo albums, of me and Monica dressed up in costume and standing in front of my parent’s fireplace (the scene of all important childhood photos, of course!). I love thinking about those days when it was still so exciting to dress up, and when eating candy was something that didn’t induce guilt!

My other favorite memory is the pumpkins. We lived just down the road from a farm that had a big pumpkin patch. And every year, on a perfect fall Saturday, we’d traipse through this patch looking for the perfect pumpkins to pick. My dad was big on helping us find ones that were a little unique, that had character. Then my dad would help us carve them – and this was something he always took very seriously. We never had your standard run of the mill jack-o-lanterns at our house. No, our jack-o-lanterns had personalities and lots of teeth – carved with precision by my engineer father.

These days, candy is really more my enemy than my friend (as in, I just finally lost all those extra baby weight pounds – please, stay away!). I don’t get excited about dressing up, and I don’t live near a pumpkin patch. But the fun for me in Halloween now is watching my kids enjoy it, seeing them in their costumes, staring wide-eyed at their big bags of candy, watching them as they decide on how they want their dad to carve their pumpkins. And maybe that’s why Halloween is such a great holiday – it’s a kids’ holiday, a holiday that makes us remember the joy in being kids and makes us stop and see the world through a child’s eye, if only for a night!

So what’s your favorite Halloween memory?

3 comments:

Ellie said...

Thanks for sharing! I used to do the pouring candy on the floor thing as well. And my best friend's name is Monica, too! :)

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

I have many favorite memories from past Halloween's so I will share last years favorite memory.

Last year was my nephew Ethan's first Halloween,he was 8 months old and went as a baby dragon.I know!He was adorable.So anyways I figured dragons faces should match their bodies right?So I pull out my shimmery green/blue eye shadow,lime green glitter eye liner and blush brush and sit him down on the couch.What should've been a simple 1-2 minute make up process turned into a 10 minute process of constantly fighting for my makeup brushes life and trying to save it from my nephews teething mouth. All of that slober.{Shudders}