Trick or Treat or just form an assembly line and hand me some candy

My neighborhood is nuts. Nuts, I say. We had TWENTY TWO bags of candy ready to go for Halloween. Most of them had an average of 140 pieces in the bag. And we were out by 7:20. We did hand out 2 pieces for about an hour but other than that we only gave out one piece. Y'all, that's crazy talk. A woman in our subdivision estimated she had 2300 kids at her door. I think that sounds about right for us as well. And again, we stopped at 7:20.

I don't know why every person in our town comes to our subdivision to trick or treat. Maybe it's because the houses are close together and few neighborhoods in this town have sidewalks and we do. I don't know, but we were warned before we moved in and the warnings were justified.

Here is a shot Rob took of the masses entering at 4:30. 4:30!!!!! That's the entrance to our subdivision on the right side of this shot. People park in the business center right outside of our entrance and just walk in. All. night. long.

I do love that nearly every house goes all out in their decorating. I also love that the streets feel like a block party. But I don't like the assembly line feel to it. Homeowners pretty much just sit in their driveways and hand out a piece of candy and yell "Next!"

But why wouldn't you want to come here when you really get a full on Halloween experience. Homeowners dress up in costume and even put on a show. Here is Maleficent handing out candy. There was a huge line to see her. It was almost like being in Disney World.

And here are some pirates from that movie. You know the one. They had this whole little routine down complete with music. Rob wants us to do this next year. Seriously.

You can't even just pull your kid in a normal wagon. Even the wagons are tricked out. No pun intended.

But it really is fun. Here are a few shots of some houses. This really doesn't give you the full effect because Rob took them earlier in the day before smoke machines and lights came on.

We did our family costume that you can see in the post below, but on the big night the kids wanted to pick their own costumes. We gave up on Lainey's shoes after 30 seconds. It wasn't worth the effort. Good thing we live in Alabama and you don't need them yet. It was still in the high 70's that night so her little lion paws could remain blissfully sock free.

Rob wore his trusty Captain Hook costume that he wears every year. I didn't want to be left out so I pulled my Lucy costume out of the garage 15 minutes before our friends showed up. Don't I look so Lucy putting some touches on the food for the evening?

And don't think I use pumpkins only for fruit kabobs. The hold candy corn rice krispies quite nicely as well. I made a bunch for Will's school party and we used the left overs for that night.

My friend Keely and her family came over so they could trick or treat with us. I didn't get a group shot but I snapped this as we were heading off for the night.

And my friend Wendy came over with her daughter, Molly Grace, and another sweet little girl as well. Again, I didn't get a group shot because it got crazy busy, but Rob managed to get one of these cute girls as they handed out candy in our driveway.

 All in all it was an awesome night. I love Halloween. I think it is such a fun holiday and even though it is kind of insane in my neighborhood, I think it is a ton of fun. We're already looking forward to next year.

Happy Halloween, 2013!!