Halloween

I will need to get pictures from Karen's camera but in the mean time I needed to post

I will be the first top admit I cussed John Decker this last week. Let me tell you why. My wife is great at starting traditions, especially neighborhood ones. So she starts this Halloween chili cook off the year we move in. It is a success and the kids have set up a silly little (spooky) display in the basement (unfinished). We ask several of the neighbors to humor our kids and go take a look. It is cute and they get positive comments and want to do it again next year.

Next year we still have an unfinished basement so I help the kids and it becomes a bit bigger of a maze and spooky things. Still very amature, but pretty cool for an at home kind of thing and the kids have fun. Well worth it. Deckers came that year. I did not know that Jon was a Halloween NUT. He asks to help and let his kids do some stuff too. Sounds innocent enough right?

3rd year Jon is there ready and rearing to go. This is all great . Jon has a bunch of ideas and is doing most of the work. I LOVE it. The set up is great and Jon's added touch makes it a lot better with some great effects. We are stick to some of the better ideas while having Jon tweak his ideas and it becomes a bit of a miniature master piece. Jon's Halloween spirits are starting to show and he has added some really cool props. He is great with the show and people LOVE it too.

Year 4. We finished the basement. I was not about to allow people to have the spook alley inside so we start strategizing if we could do it out side. Jon's brain has been at work. He has it planned out and takes over. I think he wonders if he is stepping on my feet because he has taken charge, because it is in my yard. He keeps asking me about everything and I am thinking, this is your show buddy. Well.... Our entire backyard turns into Halloween land. We keep some things from the inside stuff and add 3 new scenes(the 90 foot tunnel, the spider maze, and the grave yard scene). Enough work goes into this that we end up advertising so more people can see it and make it worth all the time and effort. I am great with all of this because a lot of people help, but no one as much as the Deckers. especially Jon. He seems to live at our house the week before Halloween. We missed him in November :)

Year 5. The Deckers move. Jon makes sure to get me all of the tunnel and spider stuff that he has been storing. I already had the dots, dummies and grave yard stuff. We are bummed because Jon has some really cool props. He offers to leave them but that would be a bit too much to ask of the pumpkin king I insist that he does his thing in Dallas (would be interested to hear if he did or not) He has not talked to me since the BYU-TCU game. That may have scared Jon past all his spooky intentions.

Well we have a planing meeting and have most of the circle involved, thinking with this many more bodies we can do the work that Jon has done in the past. NOT SO my friends. That is why I started hating Jon. As I am working, working, working, I can not help but think this is all Jon's fault. I become even more amazed at home much Jon did. I am very busy. The only thing that keeps me going is the HUGE amount of help I got from the new comers. The Morrels and Leffiels added new displays and were always around to help (and the new scenes were extra cool too). I finally reached a point of "OK I am thru and just do not care any more. Come what may but I am done. I just don't care any more." Well, that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. For the first time I went out to the cooking part of the activity. Sat down, visited with neighbor and did not worry one bit about that stupid spook alley. It was great!!!! I loved visiting with the neighbors. I had a couple kids come asking what there were suppose to do and I just brushed them off and told them they should have worried about that much sooner when I was trying to get help. They were now on their own. I just kept on enjoying until I realized everyone was ready to start. So I ran to get in position. I loved it.

So, now to the spook alley. This is more for the Deckers benefits in case they still come out and read this once in a while. We changed the course. I did not like people not being able to get around the tunnel on the hillside. We started in Pehrson's driveway with the line. Everyone was blocked from view. Groups were brought down to Morrell's Mad scientist scene. I did not get to see it with people, but had a lot of people raving about it. From there, they entered the tunnel with it's earie darkness and creepy touchy feelys. It lead directly to the spider maze. Trent did an awesome job with that again this year. He wants to quit. We may have to renegotiate his contract. I told him the only way out is to move out of state. He is threatening to move. Next they entered Dracula's Castle. The Leffiels built and incredible entrance and had some really fun/scary props. I kept telling them that Jon would be very impressed. Next they entered the graveyard. We made it slightly bigger to allow more time for the fear to grow about when or where the chain saw was. Steve Murray totally enjoys himself. I think it may be better than Christmas to him. He is very good at being scary. I think it comes naturally. Then they walked past a row of "dummies". It was Jessica's idea at the last minute and worked really well. Even when people know that one of the dummies is a real person they still get you. And finally to the poka dots in the dark lights. I didn't get to see much of that this year but Rachel, Ashley and their friends seemed to have a lot of fun and got their fair share of screams as well.

Any way, as it turns out, I no longer hate Jon. But I do wish they would move back. I am so ready to turn the reigns back over to him. We had a great Halloween. Hope you all did too!

I will try to get the pictures posted quickly