Happy Halloween From Humphrey House

It has been such a lovely warm autumn, and the leaves falling from our maple tree have done a great job adding color to our little spookhouse. Due to digging out the back yard for a patio, we've got quite the graveyard out front. And the pirate flag we bought a few years ago and recently re-discovered in the basement looks pretty wicked cool waving in the wind.

On Halloween night we ended up running out of candy twice, saved once by a friend's arrival and the second time by me running to CVS. We only give out once piece of candy to each child (or adult, yeah, we get a LOT of adults, kind of strange) and so we ended up handing out over 1,000 pieces of candy. I wish I were kidding. However, we do start at 3:30 and go straight till 7pm, so that's 1,000+ trick or treaters over the course of 3 and half hours. Yeah, it's still a lot!

This year was also the last party we're throwing for a while - I've sworn to take a one-year hiatus in 2010 from hosting anything, so we did have a lot of help to handle the trick or treaters. L to R: Jerry reprised his role as the Grim Reaper statue for the third year in a row; Sara and Orrin came dressed as ... Sara and Orrin; Frank dressed up as the Friendly Neighborhood Werewolf (his wife Wendy was Lil Red Riding Hood), Jason took over Mark's previous role as The Demented Zombie Pet Malcom, and Scott was Skeleton Man. Not pictured: JC as the Red Fairy Princess, Julie as Renaissance Faire Maiden, and myself as the Wicked Witch.

All in all, lots of fun. Next year Halloween falls on a Sunday, and I'm expecting that will mean leaner crowds - which will go well with my intention to scale back the madness. Then again, I may be so ready to go all out after ten months of downtime! We'll just have to see ...