It has been somewhat a disastrous Halloween planning this year.  To be fair, it had nothing to do with the economy or kids activities, just that us parents weren’t great at getting started.  The previous years had been marred by Mother Nature’s wrath, and Halloween was actually officially cancelled last year by the local city council.

• 2011; a freak snowstorm created a dangerous environment for the little ones to go trick ‘n treating, as large trees blocked the roads, loads of snow and falling branches.
• 2012; Sandy stopped by and brought down power lines, smashed house, levelled trees and winds would have carried the kids off to see the Wizard

Our expectations of another cancelled Halloween loomed over the little house, and I guess that was one of the reasons we never really decorated the house.  It would’ve been a real shame if our tombstones, pumpkins and various creepy sculptures were blown to kingdom come and damaged neighbouring cars or houses.

But, the weather behaved and it had in fact been the warmest and driest October in a long time.  If you look at the entire October calendar, here’s a breakdown of our Halloween activities, and you’ll soon realise that we panicked to get ready.

• 1-26 October – no scary activities whatsoever
• 27 October – pumpkin ride and picking
• 28-29 October – no scary activities whatsoever
• 30 October – pumpkin carving, getting sweets and buying costumes
• 31 October – horseback riding after school, dinner and trek ‘n treat when it was too dark

It was not our proudest moment as parents, but we still scrambled to make it a scary and fun Halloween.  Kids still had their school parades, which we almost missed.

The more I write about this, the more disappointed I get with myself.  We had the entire month to decorate, prepare costumes, get sweets and still we failed in this simple task.

Oh well, we’ll take revenge next year and will make it a Halloween to remember.  I want to assemble the neighbours and turn the street into a scary sleepy hollow themed road; headless corpses, red-eyed horses, pumpkin galore and other creepy crawlers climbing the houses.  Let the planning commence.

Anyway, we made it (somewhat).  Happy Halloween!