happy halloween!

When I was a sophomore in college, I shared a suite in a dorm with 7 other girls. It was crazy, hectic, cramped and SO MUCH FUN. 4 bedrooms with 2 girls in each, 2 bathrooms with separate sinks, toilets and showers, a kitchen and a huge living room and dining room made for great living. We all got along except for one girl that happened to be my direct roommate, but that is a story for another time, I think.

We decorated for every season, and Halloween, of course, was the main attraction. I went nuts with the decorations and put all of my roommates to work hanging lights and ghosts and decorating the windows. That year we had a huge co-ed slumber party and dragged all our mattresses into the living room and camped out watching scary movies into the wee hours of the morning.

One afternoon that year, one of my roommates (the now Brilliant Pediatrician) and I arrived home from class to find that all of our decorations and signs bearing the words "Happy Halloween" had all been changed to "Happy Happoween!" We set out immediately to figure out what was going on. We walked around the house examining all of the signs to make sure they were all the same, all wishing us a Happy Happoween. Once that was set, we sat down to try to figure out who had done it, why they'd done it, and what it could possibly mean. Did it mean happiness on Halloween? Was it a cultural thing? Had our Indian roommate changed them? Was it a joke? Why didn't we get it? I kid you not, we fretted about it for HOURS trying to figure out what it meant and who'd done it. In the meantime, various roommates were arriving home and expressing surprise and insisting that they weren't the culprits of the redecorating.

We were stumped, and seriously disturbed over what we considered a vandalism of all our hard-work decorating the house. That night, while we were wandering down the hall, we heard muffled laughter coming from one of the bedrooms. We cracked open the door and found two of our roommates dissolved in tears from laughing so hard. It turns out they were the vandals and they'd done it for precisely the effect it had elicited, to DRIVE US CRAZY.

The idea had sprung into their minds that morning, and they knew that when we got home and discovered the signs changed, we'd wonder and worry about it all day, as we had. 7 years later, that story still makes me chuckle.

Last night the Brilliant Pediatrician came over for a pre-Halloween celebration. We made Scrivener's Frankenstein pie (minus the meat), she brought Halloween cupcakes, we watched scary movies in front of a crackling fire and carved pumpkins.

Here are our masterpieces...




My haunted castle is on the left, and Herman, the Brilliant Pediatrician's pumpkin, is on the right.






Here is a rat trying to sneak his way into the haunted castle...
















I am hoping to get home in time to hand out a little bit of candy to trick-or-treaters, although Josh says that kids will come out before the sun goes down and the odds of my getting home by 4pm or so are pretty slim. I left out a big bowl of candy, though, let's hope the squirrels don't get to it!!














Tango and Murray, dressed as their favorite Red Sox players, and the rest of the Halloweenlover family wish you a very very Happy, Spooky, Creepy, Scary Happoween! Happy Halloween everyone!