The One with Halloween 2013

We celebrated Halloween with not one, but TWO nights of fun and candy!

The first was at our ward Trunk-or-Treat.

Months ago I asked Fox what he wanted to be for Halloween and he said a ghost. Ghost it is! So a few weeks ago I searched through pinterest and online to find the perfect ghost costume. I found THIS one and decided to model Fox's costume after it.

Essentially I took a white bedsheet, cut a hole in the middle for the head, two slits for arms, and then made slits all the way around from the bottom almost up to the head hole. Gotta love the ol' bedsheet-turned-ghost method! Simple as that!

Jane just dressed up in cute Halloweenie gear, much like last year. Cutest little witch I ever did see! 

We arrived at the church, parked the car, popped the trunk, and got to decorating! I'm still using props I made for Fox's 1st Halloween Birthday Party.

Some of the other creative cars.

That's our church building! Not the typical LDS chapel you see in the states. This used to be a bar back in the day. Elvis even sang/played here! Awesome-sauce.

My weakness! Cookies and cupcakes! I may have pigged out...
Fox picked up right where he left off last year and somehow knew exactly where to go and what to do. He ran from car to car and yelled, "Trick-or-treat! I'm a ghost!"

No light = blurry people = perfect for Halloween! Spooooky!

My fave costume: Maya as Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Brother Chatterly explaining the rules.

It's all in the details.

Trick or treat!

Fox checking out his loot.

We only lasted an hour or so. Poor Jane was up past her bedtime and she gets cranky if she's not on schedule... So home we went!
To break up the two nights of ghosts, ghouls, and goblins, here's a little interlude of 20 interesting things about, or related to, Halloween that I found on The Pioneer Woman's blog:
1. Halloween, celebrated October 31st, is one of the world’s oldest holidays. While it is most popular in North America and Canada, it is celebrated around the globe.

2. Americans purchase nearly 600 million pounds of candy a year for Halloween. This is the equivalent of 16 billion fun size Snickers bars or 158 trillion individual Candy Corns.

3. According to a recent survey conducted by The National Confectioners’ Association (NCA), chocolate is the favorite Halloween candy for 72 percent of Americans.

4. Halloween candy sales average about 2 billion dollars annually in the United States.

5. A generous 74 percent of households will pass out candy to trick-or-treaters this year, and 72 percent of those intend to give 2-3 pieces per trick-or-treater.

6. The largest pumpkin ever measured was grown by lumber salesman Tim Mathison. It weighed in at 2,032 pounds and took 105 days to grow in his backyard.

7. The fastest time to carve one ton of pumpkins is 3 hours 33 minutes 49 seconds, and was achieved by Stephen Clarke at Harrah’s Casino Resort, Atlantic City, NJ on October 29, 2008. See the video here.

8. Using pumpkins as jack-o’-lanterns is a Celtic custom intended to welcome home the spirits of deceased ancestors while simultaneously warding off evil spirits, and the restless soul of “Stingy Jack”.

9. “Stingy Jack”, as the Irish myth goes, made it a habit of playing tricks on the Devil. Once Jack died, God didn’t want him in heaven and the devil, put off by his tricks, would not claim his soul either–sending him off to roam the earth at night with only a burning coal to light the way. “Stingy Jack” put that coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the earth every since.

10. According to 24/7 Wall St., who used data from market research firm, Information Resources, Inc., Hershey’s Company’s Reese’s took the spot as the #1 Halloween candy in 2012 with sales of just under $510 million. M&M’s was #2 with $500.82 million, and Snickers was #3 at $456.91 million.

11. Halloween is the 2nd most commercially successful holiday, with Christmas being the first.

12. Bobbing for apples is thought to have originated from the Roman harvest festival that honored Pomona, the goddess of fruit trees. Young unmarried people would bob for apples floating in water or hanging from a string, and the first to bite into the apple would be the next one allowed to marry.

13. The movie, “Halloween” (1978), was made in only 21 days on a very tight budget. They used the cheapest mask they could find for the Michael Meyers character, which turned out to be a William Shatner Star Trek mask. They spray-painted the mask, teased the hair, and reshaped the eye holes. PS - some of it was filmed in South Pasadena - our old home!

14. Samhainophobia is the fear of Halloween.

15. According to the National Retail Federation’s 2013 Top Costumes Survey, adults and kids are both choosing more traditional costumes this year. More than 5 million adults plan to dress as a witch, and 2.9 million as a Batman character. Children want to be princesses (3.8 million), an animal (2.8 million), or a Batman character (2.5 million).

16. Americans are expected to spend $2.6 billion on Halloween costumes, spending $1 billion on children’s costumes, $1.2 billion on adult costumes, and $330 million on pet costumes.

17. The average person will spend $75 on Halloween candy, costumes and decorations, bringing total spending to $6.9 billion; this represents an increase of nearly $30 since 2005.

18. The most lit jack-o’-lanterns on display at once is 30,581, and was achieved by the City of Keene, New Hampshire, USA, on October 19, 2013.

19. The famous magician Harry Houdini (1874-1926) died on Halloween night.

20. Many of our halloween superstitions have roots in the Middle Ages–for instance, concerns about black cats came from a time when many people believed witches avoided detection by turning into black cats.

On Halloween day Jane passed out on the couch - candy junkie - she OD'd!

There are set trick-or-treating hours here in the town of Netzaberg - a government owned neighborhood in Germany.

I thought California was great for trick-or-treating because the houses are close together, but Halloween is the one night of the year I appreciate that houses here are even closer together!

At 5pm sharp we headed out the door and drove over to the part of Netzaberg where all the rich doctors live :) So did everyone else and their dog, ha. Cute patootie Janey. I just love the background in this picture. This is my favorite view out to Germany.

He was going a mile a minute and kept saying "NEXT!" after each house. Your wish is my command!

On Halloween, time = candy so I was A-OK with him being so pumped and excited! Loved all the enthusiastic kids running around.

"Ding dong!" 

"Boo!" 

"Agghhhh!"

We finished up at that part of the neighborhood then came back to our neck of the woods. Jane was done, poor girl. Fox still wanted to keep going! So Chris stayed home and passed out candy and I took Fox to a couple more houses. When we came to our house he said he wanted to keep going, but after a few steps he turned around and was done. We went trick-or-treating for about an hour. Now I understand why my dad was always pushing us to stay out longer - still so much golden trick-or-treating time! We bought two huge bags of candy and it was gone in about 15 minutes! Holy tons of kids! Apparently the German kids come to the American neighborhoods to go trick-or-treating. It was so funny to hear their accents "chwrick-ohr-chreat" - "danke!"We'll have to make sure to get at least three times as much candy for next year!

Giant blow up cat! Trick or treating. Fox doing his thang. Awesome balloon archway, I'd love to know where they got all of them blown up!

It's been two days since Halloween and Fox is still asking to go trick-or-treating every 5 minutes. I think it's going to be a long year until next Halloween, ha!

Holidays just keep getting better and more fun as the kids get older! It's so fun to live vicariously through our children.