Eat Your Heart Out KLo

I had the most fun on Halloween last night that I've had for many years. We haven't had trick or treaters at our house since Lovely Daughter was a little girl. Then it was just her little friends and my nieces and nephew that would come out. I guess that's what happens when you live in the country.

Anyway, now that Ole is a volunteer fireman, we got to participate in the big "doings" that the fire department puts on for Halloween every year. They open up the fire hall for the community, especially the kids, and serve hot cider, hot chocolate, hot dogs with all the trimmings and give away full-sized candy bars and cyalume sticks for the kids to wear on their costumes after dark. Some of the firemen took the kids back to the garage area and let them sit in the big fire trucks and get their pictures taken. One of the deputies of the county sheriff's department was there with his canine unit named Kooz, a trained attack dog, that slobbered all over the kids when they would come up to pet him. The kids had a ball and didn't want to leave.

Ole dressed up in his turn-out gear to show some of the kids what everything on the uniform was for. Some of the kids even got to try on his jacket and head gear and try out the oxygen mask that the firemen have to wear when they go into a fire.

So eat your heart out, KLo, here's a picture of Ole in his gear.

Kitchen Logic must have a thing about firemen or something because when she found out that Ole was a fireman she BEGGED me to give him to her when I was done with him!! I told her there wouldn't be much left when I got done - actually that issue is questionable right now after 40 years of marriage (just kidding, Ole, just kidding). Or maybe it just has to do with the fact that he's 5' 14" tall!! KLo barely comes up to his belly button (snicker).

So as us adults were sitting around the fire hall between herds of kids and parents that would stop by, we were reminiscing about pranks that were played on Halloween when we were kids. Me, being the only one there that had actually grown up in the area, had a few tales to tell about happenings of years ago in our little town on Halloween night.

Sure, there was the normal TPing, and tipping over of outhouses and such. But the one that took the cake was the year that a bunch of teenagers got together and hoisted a full-sized canoe up to the very top of the steeple on the Catholic church and left it hanging there. Now I'm not going to go into detail about just HOW they got it up there for fear that you'll think I know too much and participated in this little prank (snicker). But it took the elders of the church quite a bit of finagling and several days to figure out how to get the canoe down on the ground again. To this day, only those who participated know who masterminded that prank.

One of the things that impressed me was how dressed up the adults got that were taking the kids around for trick or treating. Some of the costumes were pretty ingenious and involved a lot of work.

I especially love the warts on this witch's face. She even cackled. She was missing her broom but said she had to leave it at home because she needed to carry her little girl's candy bucket. Sounds reasonable to me.

Glad I didn't meet him in a dark alley.

Strawberry Shortcake was an adult - her costume involved a lot of work.




I thought this one was the cutest of all. She wiggled when she walked.



I LOVE the missing teeth! And here's the canine unit. Such a good dogger.

Hope you guys all had a great time. I sure did.