Halloween.... What Halloween?

Halloween 2014 was poised to be an epic one.  It fell on a Friday (no school or work the next day!) and the weather was chilly and "Halloween-esque."

This was also our first Halloween without any kids.

We have a lot of good memories from Halloween past. It was this neighborhood where both our children spent their first Halloween.  When they were young, we had neighborhood parties, we dressed in costume and took them trick or treating and like every good parent, we pilfered their candy when they went to school (Butterfingers were my drug of choice.)

 What I thought would be an epic Halloween actually was an Epic Fail.

The first sign that things were off was the lack of decorations on people's homes. Our neighborhood use to be filled with spider webs, graveyards, orange lights and blow up pumpkins. I didn't even see one carved jack-o-lantern on our street.

We are among the guilty.

We stopped decorating the house when the boys were in middle school.  We stopped carving pumpkins when my oldest left for college. Between work, after school practices and weekend sporting events, we were tapped out. Neither boy seemed to mind or notice so we continued in our Halloween apathy.

I imagine the change in our neighborhood is due to the fact a lot of us are empty nesters.  Many have grown children with families of their own.

So, this year, we pulled out the fire pit, put on our Pandora Halloween music, filled the bowl with candy... and waited.  In past years, we would rush home from work because the first trick or treaters would be knocking at 5:30, a rush around 7 p.m. and done by 8:30.  This year, I think we received our first visitor at 6:15 and our last at 7. We even called out to kids who walked by our house, "We have candy!!"

Creepy and Pathetic.

I do miss the days when Halloween was more of an "event."

Next year, we will carve a pumpkin, drag out the fire pit, fill the bowl with candy and find Halloween music.

I'm not ready to give up.... yet.