Will This Black Gook EVER Come Out of My Hair?!

Last year, we volunteered to participate in the annual Trunk or Treat at our church in St. Petersburg, Florida. We’d never done one of those before and we rushed right out, and bought the makings of a graveyard! Think about it… Church? Cemetery! Yeah!!!

A large piece of green material (for grass)
Headstones
Bones – lots and lots of bones!
Two tiny coffins (for the candy)
A large, fully poseable skeleton – with glowing red eyes

Easy Peasy! So, we showed up on the right day, and at the right time at the church last year, and started unloading our stuff. And, that’s when we noticed that nobody else had any scary trunk decorations. There were scarecrows, popular cartoon characters, Linus’ Great Pumpkin, etc. But, no scary stuff at all – except ours. Somebody forgot to tell us that no scary stuff was permitted. Heh… (Nobody asked us to leave so everything was fine.)

So, we’re in Georgia now, and attending a new church, or course, and we were invited, via email, to participate in their Trunk or Treat. We were SO EXCITED!! At church the following Sunday, I found the secretary, and told her our story of last year’s trunk or treat. She looked at me quizzically, and didn’t respond. After an uncomfortable silence, I continued, “So, what I’m asking is…can we decorate with something scary?”

She laughed, and said, “Yes, of course! Please do!!”

YEA!!!

So, yesterday afternoon, Mason spent some time putting on his awesome costume, which I made him wear two years in a row because it was the most expensive costume in the history of the family. He didn’t mind. He stopped trick or treating a couple of years ago but he still likes to dress up…because all of the adults in the family do, too!

If you are a videogame fan, you might know who Mason is. 😉

Brian and I decided to add adult skeleton costumes and real shovels to the mix for this year. Grave diggers!!

While the skeleton costumes looked fantastic, they were VERY uncomfortable. One size fits all = One size is very uncomfortable for all. Brian’s pants wouldn’t bend when he sat down. My pants were too tight around the knees (I do NOT have large knees) but ginormously huge around the waist so they kept trying to fall down. But, it was all for a good cause (the entire city was invited) so, instead of whining about mis-fitting polyester, we laughed about it (until a knee ripped in mine…)

We didn’t need to leave the house until 4:15 but, just to be safe, at 2:00 p.m., Brian and I put all of the face makeup on the bathroom counter, and positioned his laptop just right so we could both watch a how-to video on YouTube. After about 45 minutes, we looked great but the bathroom was a WRECK! (Thank goodness all of the face paint came off the countertops!)

We left on time, and it POURED all the way to church. Our rain chances were 73% so we were nervous that we’d get rained out. However, lots of people were praying and, as soon as we arrived at the church parking lot, the rain stopped and it stayed dry for the entire event!!

I can’t stop laughing at how Brian’s costume makes him look severely knock-kneed. And, check out the small bones in the candy casket!

And, guess what?! The Sanderson Sisters were there WITH Billie!!!

If you don’t understand this, watch Hocus Pocus. You will LOVE it!

Hundreds of of kiddos and their parents showed up. We LOVED looking at all the the costumed smiles! It was a true blessing to be able to participate. And, one vehicle was a LOT scarier than ours!!

We found a really nice restaurant in Rising Fawn, and went there for dinner after leaving church. We had a strawberry salad, duck breast, rack of lamb, fried mushrooms, and something called Rajas, which was amazing!! Mason enjoyed the honey almond chicken so much that he asked me to find a recipe for it. (If you have a good one, please let me know in the comments section below!)

After accidentally licking some face paint off our lips during dinner, we were hoping that stuff was non-toxic. Turns out it is.