Happy Halloween!

I am so glad that is over. This year wasn't fun, not at all and I can't understand why. It just wasn't.
Nothing seemed to go smoothly, people didn't call until today to say if they were coming, many people didn't call at all, people told me they were coming and didn't.....
The 1st party we had was amazing and I worked out that way because we staggered it, school friends and little kids first, then older kids and church members. Perfect.
Last year we were in the hated house and so we kept it smaller, a good mix of big kids and little kids and we had lots of room.
This year, everyone turned up at once and there were many people, too many to count people. Most of them children aged 4-9. Too many! They ran riot and ripped decorations off walls, screamed, ran outside and threw all the basketballs over the wall, it wasn't good ( though they had fun!) It calmed down some when we started to do the doughnut game ...mini doughnuts on string, covered in cream and eaten with hands behind the back.....then we hit the pinata, with a baseball bat while H held it aloft on a vacuum hose....necessity is the mother of invention as they say.
Alfie cried, the hoodlums set of the smoke alarm by going overboard with the smoke machine, chaos really from start to finish.
H doesn't rush, he doesn't believe in worrying, he is a plodder, a take your timer, what's the big dealer-er. This year he even outdid himself.
At 4pm ( yes a mere 2 hours before the start of the party) he said " I am going to go get pumpkins, they would look good outside there in front"
"good luck with that" said I, having been shopping for this for the past several weeks and having been at Tesco, followed by Asda at 6.45am, I knew that apart from 32615 devils pitchforks, there was nothing left to buy , not a pumpkin in sight...at 4pm? Forget it. But he had to see for himself.
Meanwhile the house was nowhere near done, it wasn't ready AT ALL!
I didn't bother to ask when he planned on carving the pumpkins because THERE WEREN'T ANY! That was one fight we avoided, in fact we avoided all fighting because, well what's the point.
He did have the decency to say " Man, I don't know how I let this whole month get by me like that!" which is his way of saying, "whoops!"
We did it, there were high points...like this one


My dear life, I could eat this boy on a biscuit!
He was so happy and before everyone arrived he was belly laughing at the big boy uncles...



And Seth, who wanted to be a street Skeleton..he is a laugh that boy!



The house looked sort of OK but nowhere near as good as before, I was just disappointed with it all this year, grrrrrrrr!







The pictures don't show how the blacklights made everything glow, that was cool.



The doughnut game was great, hoorah for that one that I thought everyone would be bored with by now.







When everyone left, it hit all of us the same, we were cold, aching and sort of 'flat,' None of the buzz we have had in other years. I am just happy that we have done it and now we can concentrate on the trip. Hoorah!

I hope people had more fun than I did, it was great to see everyone and I love having them come to us, the kids from school were happy and they did have the best time.

Oh the cakes were good...revolting but caused just enough exclamation.


And they are amputated FINGERS...digits, not stumpy willies thankyou. Some people ( more than is decent) thought they were penises, imagine that!



I made some regular orange ones for the squeamish amongst us.



And now we done, until next year. If we do this again I will do it differently, staggering the guests was a great idea, I wish we had done that this year.

Sophie's passport came today, that's so exciting, we are all ready to go, I am changing some £s to $s tomorrow, that helps make it more real.
That's out focus for the next few weeks, and a happy thought it is too!