Hollow-een

Back when I was a kid, Halloween was a huge deal. Not only did we have all-day parties at school (Political Correctness wasn't invented yet) with pumpkin decorating and costume contests, at home my parents hosted their share of parties, too.

While I don't remember the one pictured above, I have photographic evidence that I wanted to grow up to be either Dolly Parton or a diva of some kind while my twin was a young farmer, complete with a corncob pipe. Funny how I ended being a "look at me and my blog" diva and she feeds cows each morning before heading to her full-time job.

Too bad we didn't dress up as millionaires!!

I have tried to carry on some Halloween traditions with Carter. We'd always get pumpkins to carve and costumes to wear while trick-or-treating. Last year, he went with some friends and I insisted he dress up. My thought is teenagers are too old to trick-or-treat. But if they are still going to do it, it better be a legitimate costume.

This year, I'm not sure what happened. Here it is Halloween night. Carter is in his room doing homework. There isn't one pumpkin on our front porch -- just a lonely scarecrow decoration I threw out there on Saturday. We're not the Halloween equivalent of Scrooge or anything. On the way home from work we stopped at the grocery store so I could pick up some candy (which has been staring me in the face probably every time I've shopped since July 4th practically).

We do have our yard lights on to signal "We have candy here!" but it's been a quiet night. The official trick-or-treat hours are 5-7 p.m. We got our first and last guests at 6:42 p.m. A family of 4 kids from around the corner. That's it.

Sad. It's sort of like I've lost my childhood twice now. I'll have to do a better job of getting into the spirit next year! For now I'm sitting here feeling kind of hollow... except for that spot in my gut that is slowly filling up with all these leftover Twix, Nestle Crunch and KitKat bars.

At least that part of Halloween hasn't changed!