Our Spooky House

The excitement over Halloween began at our house quite a while ago, even before Laura's birthday. Laura preferred counting down to Halloween rather than her birthday, and seemed momentarily disappointed on her birthday when she learned it was still over 3 weeks until Halloween (that disappointment ended once she started receiving presents). Our conversations are filled with details about Halloween-what costume she will wear (Sleeping Beauty. No, Ariel. No, Sleeping Beauty. Yes. Sleeping Beauty. Probably). How much candy she will get (lots). Which houses she will trick-or-treat at (all of them). But one crucial detail was almost overlooked.

One day while in the bath Laura casually mentioned to the Army Man that our house was going to be very spooky this year. The Army Man, who has some weird notion that I am aware of everything going on in our lives and that I have a reason for doing everything the way I do, almost didn't mention this minor detail to me. Maybe he figured I was just about to pull out all the stops and he would come home from work one day to a full-on haunted house. Thankfully, he decided to ask me about my plans for making our house spooky and I promptly began to panic. I had no idea Laura had expectations of spookiness at our house. I thought she was too young and WAY too chicken for spookiness. I had no idea how to make our house spooky!

In the end, a trip to the Halloween store was enough to convince Laura she didn't really want too much spookiness. We settled on some cobwebs and pumpkin lights. I did pretty lackluster job of putting it all up, but whether because she recognized that her mother's pathetic attempt at decorating was all she was going to get, or because she was scared by the prospect of the screaming skeletons from the store, Laura humors me and tells me on a daily basis just how spooky our house is and that it is the best house in the neighborhood.

I think that it was these pumpkins in particular that really upped our spooky factor. I bet the neighborhood kids will run screaming from our house tomorrow night. Don't be embarrassed if a small scream escapes your mouth as you look at this picture.

It is finally time for all of my hard work to pay off. I'm ready to scare some kids tomorrow.