halloween Report: number two. depressed eye.

In Memory of Beza. Wood
departed this life
nov 2 1837
aged 45 years
here lies one wood
enclosed in wood
one wood within another
the outter wood is very good
we cannot praise the other.
Beza Wood, Winslow, Maine, 1837

dad and i have been ahead of everyone else( as usual) in terms of putting the halloween decor up. so that means the spider and the web ( cement spider and 10 ft diam web), graveyard ( amusing and true toumbstones), the invisible man ( sunbathing in the nude of course) are up. so what else is there to add? today, it was the eyeballs( on the roof.)
if you read the tales of our eyeballs ( neighborhood watch) below, you know that they are big yoga balls that we painted to look like eyeballs. we tie them to the roof of our house and they watch the on goings of the night.
well yesterday dad and i put them up and ran out to the store to get some food for dinner, when we came back, one of the eyes ( ernie) was deflated... the house had it's first ever flat. ( you think your car had problems.... )
now the question remains what do we do? Use the smaller triplets ( harrry, ron and hermione?) in his place, or put ron and herminone up on either side, we could also leave the house as a cyclops. any of these work, or any different version of it. My friends have been asked for a solution, and hopeflly will telll me ernies replacement solution.

This post is in fond memory of Ernie Ball. may you allways keep a watchfull eye o'er us. Rip.


ghoul out.

halloween report: number one,the history of hallows eve!

Here lies a man that was Knott born,
his father was Knott before him,
he lived Knott and died Knott
yet underneath this stone doth lie

Jhon Knott, Sheffield, England

Happy October! This October, halloween brings on a semi-controversal topic.
Halloween falls on a sunday this year. some church goers may tend to think that this means that we ought not to celebrate it, but in terms of tradition, think again.
Shall we begin with some history? Ole Hallows Eve began with a simple idea one religious man shared with another... ( set the stage now) Two middle aged men are sitting on very comfortable chairs in a church somewhere... perhaps england? some where around a gothic time period. Just chatting. one looks to the other and says: " say peter, I think that because 'tis autum and all the leaves seem to be dying, that all those evil spirits come out tonight because they hold their power in the night." "really george?What ever shall we do?" "Well how about we tell tell everyone to dress up in frigthfull attire and scare the daylights out of the spirits?That will give us 364 days of peace from those spirits ( Remember, Ben Franklin hasnt been around yet to to invent the whole leap year concept.) " Good idea! I'll get right on it!"
Okay, apart from the odd exchange of diolouge, halloween was created to protect the church goers from harm! Many people don't know this history lesson, and think that halloween was created for the opposite reason, instead of having us scaring the spirits away ( or more realistically nowadays, making them laugh so hard that they are incapable of doing anything else, because the idea of a pretty pink princess in a tutu of doing them any harm is priceless), people may believe that we are honoring them. In some towns, children are not getting their yearly stash of halloween candy, or any year that halloween falls on a sunday.
I'm not saying that i do not understand their beliefs, or i dont respect them, but i just wonder which of people who say halloween should be canceled this year know this.

Ghoul out!

The Neighborhood Watch

for most neighborhoods, there is a group that watches the problems of the neighbor hood and, if anything should happen, lets people know. well, although we are a part of that, we have one other wepon to defeat the theives...... THE EYES!!! (duh dun duuunnnnn)
one eye is named Bert, and the other is Ernie... together they are the main eyes, they "head up" the opperation. there are multiple other eyes.... depending on how many kids have decided to jump on them recently.... (I'm always the top offender)..... well, recently, mom was going through her pesky full email inbox, and came across an old email from a windstorm that we had this year, and decided to share. basically, mom sent out an e-mial letting our friends know that we had lost Bert/ernie......
"Subject: Missing eyeball
You read the subject line right - with today's wind, we had an eyeball from our roof decide to take a walk. (By the way, I'm writing from the house on Cedar that goes nuts for Halloween - the missing eyeball is one of a pair that we have (had) on the roof of our house each Halloween for years.) If you happen to see one rolling by your house, please give us a call or drop us a line. I'm afraid he'll get lonely without his twin.The description is as follows: big white round eyeball with red iris and black pupil. His name is Burt (although maybe it's Ernie - difficult to tell them apart). Friendly, but will probably not respond if you call him. Very bouncy (especially in October). It's possible that he may be a little deflated because he's missing his brother. Poor thing.Thanks! Laura "
well.... then a couple days later......
"Annie wrote:
As my husband and I were taking a morning walk with our beloved Poodle Pearl along the W & OD path, we found ourselves a bit uneasy. We began to discuss that we had a slight sense of being watched and could not determine the source. We stopped, looked around and discovered a HUGE white ball watching us from below. There between the bushes......we recognized Ernie/Bert but he did not respond when we called his name. We assured him everything was OK and my husband, risking life and limb, descended from the path and made his way between the bushes, real spiders and the like, successfully rescuing Bert. Meanwhile Pearl did not see eye-to-eye with Bert's point of view and insisted on giving him the "evil eye". bert, being so big, we had no other option but to "roll our eye" back to his rightful home. At the end, we placed him safely and told him to stay still and not even wink until his owners came home.
All the best,Annie and Robert"
my mom had to show her gratitude and sent them a quick thank you note...
" Ahhhh, this just goes to prove that there are true warriors out there (both Robert and Poodle Pearl). Please know that you have our heartfelt thanks, and the boys will remember you in their prayers each night. I hope Pearl was not too stressed by the whole situation. (Although I wish I could have read the minds of the people driving by you when you were returning our eyeball. "Um, Honey? You're not going to believe what I just saw on Cedar Lane...")
Bugs & Hisses,Laura"

Oh, what a interesting neighborood watch we have..

Are we different? Or just into halloween?

For this family, anything goes. But how far are we willing to take it?

Far but not too far. We love to be " day dwellers" and love the nieghborhood. just don't be too frightened if we dress up early for halloween, or if you see a foot hanging out of the back of the car!

I have a memory of when i was about six or seven when my dad and i were taking a bike ride on a windy October day. Before Halloween, but we still had all of the decorations up.

as we were riding we saw a family of five struggling to keep a big sheet of plasic on the ground while they atached some frightfull decorations to it. All of a sudden the wind picked up and both dad and i jumped off the bikes to grab the sheet; we have that problem all the time, and we have a system to hold it down.

The family thanked us, and asked us if we could help them for just a couple minuites. they were setting up a haunted house in thier backyard. We talked over the wind and soon they were telling us of all of their favorite halloween houses. We were happy to find that we made the top of the list. The family on the other hand didn't know that we lived in the Halloween house. " We love the house," they said " but we can't help wondering what happens after the decorations come down. Is the family gothic? Wev'e seen candels in the windows." Dad and i struggled to keep our faces still. We are quite the opposite! we just kept talking about the house untill the family said they were finished, and thanks again for all the help. We folded the sheet up, and as we handed it to them we softly said " your welcome, and by the way... we live in the Halloween House, and no, we are not gothic." i wish i could explain their faces. Dad and i silently laughing hopped on the bikes to resume our ride.

I think that the family was too embarresed to move. When we passed the house on the way back, they were still standing there, not frozen with shock, but talking and making motions toward Cedar Lane. We saw them that halloween and they apologised. We told them not to worry, but the story was deffinetally going to stick around for a while! indeed it has! Every year we ask each other" Candles this year, or is it too gothic?" every year the candles stayed ( untill last year, when we gave up... they were old candles that needed batteries.)

So, no, we are not gothic! Happy New year, and keep halloween in your mind!

How did the Halloween House get started?

What on earth do these people think they are doing with this holiday????

simple: celebrating with friends!

When my family began celebrating halloween more than the adverage human, we decided that we would never do anything gorey, and that it should be a fun, and cute holiday. My dad is a chemical engineer who likes to tinker, and my mom os one crazy lady who loves kids, and loves the idea of halloween and costumes. She supplies the ideas. Where do I come in? I am the child labor, the ideas, the ladder holder, the volunteer recruiter, and the kid in the family. Three in a halloween loving family cannot always be enough to get the job done, so that's where the volunteers, also known as my friends, come into play.
the normal family may hang some lights, carve a pumpkin, buy one bag of candy, go to the costume store, and go to the halloween parade. My family: Set up the graveyard, set up the witch, set up the ghosts, set up and reapair the eyeballs, climb on the roof to install eyeballs and spiders, put up skeletons,put the cement spider out, buy 5 bags of candy or toys, bring friends over to dip chocolate prtzles, cook apple cider, make jello, get the fire pit ready, set up the cars, call the church down the street to ask for parking spaces( thank you so much!), donate money to the church for their help.... the list goes on and on. The first year we recieved only 5 trick-o-treaters. This year we can easily count 50 kids and thier closest family and friends in the yard at one time. There is almost always a police car out front to control traffic, and many photographers.
We have one family who makes the trip every year from texas to Virginia to vist family and our house. People start visiting the house in early september/ late agust and keep coming untill a couple days after halloween. Yes, it takes that long. The nieghbors have given up giving out candy at their house, and they now take a lawn chair and hang out at our house.
When we get a child that is scared of something, there are many family members standing around to show the child how something works, or how to pet the giant kitty. Since our yard is reletivly flat, this is a walk through and interactive yard. You can walk through Cedar Lane Cemetary, pet the Cement spider, walk in front of the witch to create a burst of fog from her cauldron, bounce the eyeballs, and of course get some snacks and drinks! For the past two years we have laid bubble wrap on the side walk... that's gone in about 20 min! the first trick-o-treaters come as early as 5 and stay out as late as 12 pm. Even the rain doesn't stop us, although it does slow down buisness!

In the end, we have a kid friendly enviornment ( anyone with a REALLY scary mask is asked to take it off), and we have the best ( in my and my friend's minds) yard around that the youngest child to the oldest adult can appreciate. We hope to see you next halloween!