Happy Halloweenie!

Allie as a Princess-Kitty-Fairy. She's covering all the bases this year.

I had decided to host a Halloween party at our house this year since our friends had come to the consensus that they no longer had any interest in "going out".  We used to love to go down to Waikiki for Halloween - the main strip around Kalakaua becomes completely packed with people just walking around, checking out other people's costume, taking video, pictures, etc.  It's always good fun.  However, the not fun parts are trying to drive down there, trying to find parking once you've driven down there or if we've taken a cab, trying to catch a cab home isn't easy either.  I guess we're finally getting too old for all of this excitement and I care more about Allie having a good time.  Also handing out candy to the neighborhood kids is fun too. So we decided this year, we would just hang out at our house and hand out candy to the kids.

Anyway, since we were hosting this venture at our house I was in freak-out, OCD cleaning/cooking mode.  Jason left town the day before so it was just me & Allie. I spent the early part of the day cleaning and making last minute preparations for the party.  Allie's school was holding an event so we went were gong to go to that and than trick or treat around the neighborhood surrounding the school.  Her friend, Sabrina, met us there.  There really wasn't too much going on at the school, they had a few simple games for the kids to play and get candy.  When we decided to start trick or treating there were still some house that weren't ready.  Also the road in front of Allie's school is kind of busy and there are no sidewalks and it was dark and sometimes you have to walk kind of close to the road, so it was a little sketchy.  However, we were still able to hit a few houses (plenty of candy for the kids!) but I think we may just return to trick or treating in Manoa next year. (less traffic, sidewalks, more people participating).

Allie and her BFF, Sabrina - Princesses forever!

Monkey

Cute baby pirate! Sabrina's brother, Lucas.

On the way home, I was amazed by the number of kids out in our nieghborhood! They have to walk so far between houses because a lot of the elderly people don't participate.  Anyway, we set up and handed out our candy too. My friends brought tons of candy! Some of the little kids (and even adults) come up and take giant handfuls of candy.  Some of the little kids I feel bad for, you can tell they come from the housing projects and can't afford costumes, and some are really sweet and timid about taking the candy so I don't really care how much they take.  I think that's why I like handing out the candy in our neighborhood, I know the kids come from our neighborhood (not like those who flock to the "nicer" neighborhoods to collect candy. . .ok, we are guilty of this ourselves) and a lot of them come from low-income families.  Its nice to make it fun for them - we decorated our garage up with fake cobwebs, lights,  hanging skulls, etc.   We all dressed up. We had fun. I hope the kids did too.

Mailman Fester (actual mailman) with Mailman Baby Rayne and Mailbox Jaime! Ridiculous!

We're still left with about 5 lbs of leftover candy, but I heard one of the dentist's offices is doing a "candy buyback" -they buy the candy ($1/lb) from the kids and then send it to the troops overseas.  I talk to Allie about doing this and she agreed.  We picked out of few things that we wanted to keep but bagged up the rest. Allie is very serious about getting rid of the stuff that I told her "will rot your teeth out" and also giving candy to "the army" because "they don't have any candy there. haha I'm not sure, she understand what it all means but it works.

This will haunt your nightmares.