Halloween

Halloween is fast approaching. April, at 14, still goes out with her friends trick-or-treating. She does get the "aren't you too old" comment, but she and her friends don't care. One person's negativity isn't going to cause her to miss out on a bag of candy. Last year she and her friends painted and decorated some boxes as taxis. This year, they are thinking of going as vampires. The year before she had one of those inflatable costumes of a man riding a flamingo.

Louka isn't fully set on what he wants to be, he changes his mind daily. In the past few years, we bought him a bunch of costumes after Halloween at 75 percent off, $3-4 dollars. We keep the costumes in a bucket in his room and he and his friends love to play dress up. I think he's going to be the "Thing" from Fantastic Four. The Thing is a rocky hulk type man. He's always been "boy" things, like Spiderman, etc.

Nowadays, we buy the kids' costumes, but when the girls were little, I loved sewing their costumes. For their first Halloween, each of them wore a pumpkin costume I made when Rose was one. Later, we got made up some of their costumes from fancy dresses at Goodwill.

Times have changed from when we were kids and we made up our own costumes, with little forethought. I remember going as a ghost one year, a farmer in overalls another year.

But there was one year I remember clearly, Mom helped Lisa and I make paper mache heads. I was a pumpkin, Lisa was a black cat. She helped us make a lot of craft type things. I remember another craft she had us make was a wall hanging with an animal made of fake fur on a tweed background. Another time we made an angel wallhanging out of curled pipecleaners on a purple felt background.

Halloween traditions? Our family (and I growing up) go trick or treating around town on Halloween night. We dump out our treats and sort through them, chocolates together, suckers together, etc., and mom and dad inspect them. I remember my favorite house was Mrs. Holdens on South Second Street. She always gave out popcorn balls. We got to eat them since we knew Mrs. Holden and that she was the one who gave them to us. As an adult, I used to take my kids there, but now she's in the nursing home. (Wonder if she has access to the kitchen -- I love those popcorn balls, I remember Mom used to make them too, mostly at Christmas.) Nowadays, unless we know the giver, the kids can't eat anything that isn't wrapped, including cookies and apples. They end up in the trash. Now there's a sad state of affairs! I also remember getting candy cigarettes in my Halloween sack. I see they still have them, but they've been renamed candy sticks.

One of us stays home to pass out candy, and we give good treats (chocolates!). We also have a little spinning wheel that we make the kids play before they take a treat. After spinning, it will land on "take one treat" or "take two treats" or "do a little dance, get a little treat" or "no treats." The kids seem to like playing it. After everyone spins, everyone gets two treats, even those who landed on "no treats."

A few weeks before Halloween, we pick out pumpkins that we carve and roast and eat the seeds. One year we got one of those giant pumpkins. Kali ate too many seeds and didn't "go" for a week. I threatened the doctor would have to get them out somehow (I was a little more explicit, think about it) and then she went. I don't remember where we got our pumpkins as kids; now we go to farms that have special events along with picking out pumpkins, like hayrides, or petting farms. A couple of years we grew pumpkins in our backyard, but still got a couple farm-bought ones.

Something I never did as a child (it wasn't offered) but my kids do is go to the school's Halloween carnival. The kids wear their costumes and play games for a quarter and win a junky prize. It's a great time and the school raises a lot of money. We always volunteer to help out. In fact, I was one of the first people to help organize the event in Evansville when Rose was in kindergarten.

What did the Dennison kids do growing up for Halloween? Did you dress up? Like what? Did you go door-to-door for treats? Did you carve pumpkins? Did you grow them? Please tell me and the other children/grandchildren/great grandchildren what things were like when you were growing up.