Halloween… my SECOND favorite holiday. I guess you could say that it began last Monday when I ran into my very good friend at Wal*Mart where we decided to get coordinating costumes. I’ll share a photo or two later.
Friday evening was the quite festive game night… ALWAYS A TON OF FUN! My niece and nephew have had a pretty tough couple of days so I invited them to come along with me. Alex was his normal crazy self in his “professor who just graduated” costume. Poor Shelby, I think, finally came out of her shell as the games began. Later, I took them back home and returned in time to enjoy the very haunting Exorcism of Emily Rose. A very good mix of The Exorcist and courtroom drama.
Saturday night (or SUnday morning) I was awakened about 4am by my cell phone. Oh, great! What joker is playing around when I am trying to get my beauty sleep. Somehow after I found out who the culprit was, I did manage to get a few more hours of shuteye. All good! I did get a good chuckle out of it 😀
After getting off my shift on the big day, itself, Dad, my second oldest brother and assorted nieces and nephews ventured to a relatives yard of terrors. Year after year, they transform their house and yard into a fun, family-friendly fright fest complete with touring train. After having your fill of frights, you are invited into the house to sign the guest book and each family is invited to take a plate of treats and goodie bags for the kiddies. All this for the exorbitant amount of $0. Certainly is amazing that they can operate this year in and year out for the entire month and not charge a cent. Most of the items that are on display are generously donated. In fact, just the other day, a tombstone was given that had some defect which caused the original buyers to turn away. Visitors even bring along bags of flour and sugar for baking help. But leave your checkbook at home. They may take donations in form of decorations but never monetary.
Even more amazing is the number of people who have signed the book in just the last month. Over 2000! From word of mouth and flyers passed around the area. We were shocked to learn the distance travelled by some of the visitors: Louisiana, “New” England (from “across the pond”), France, Germany. WOW! So… when next October creeps its spooky head around… be sure to visit the Geren’s. I have not visited the site after daylight hours for more than a few years but I do remember that after the sun sets is when the real frightful fun begins. Unfortunately, some of the little ones are a little young for that. Even some of the older ones were a bit fearful of the maze in the daylight. OH, Puh-lease!
Hope you all had a Ghoulishly fun holiday weekend!
LOVE the Gerens! We always make sure to stop there once or twice during the season. Seems like it’s over so fast this year! My 2nd favorite holiday too… can’t even compare with Christmas, which is more than a holiday…
I was wondering if the costume coordinating was more than happenstance.
Game night was a lot of fun. Not the scariest movie, but then again, with all the horror movies we watch, I’m getting hard to scare anyway. So did you visit Gerens on Sat or Sun? A little ghoul (ok, he’s a very tall ghoul who haunts the maze) told me that Sat was their last day. Not that we could have made it back either day anyway, it was a very busy weekend, but I was just wondering…
Interesting, because I thought you had told me Friday night that Saturday was the final day. However, they were indeed open Halloween day/night also. The ghoul must have had gotten his wires crossed. The ghouls from this house were planning to go Saturday night but decided on Sunday afternoon.