"Happy Halloween. . ."

10.31.10. I am grateful for a mellow Halloween: Sonny gave a talk in primary and the Mirandas gave us two loaves of freshly baked pumpkin bread. Nothing scary today-Happy Halloween everyone!!!

Well, it always stinks when Halloween is on a Sunday, no trick-or-treating for the kids, at least not for mine. When I was a little girl, Kalihi was the place to be on Halloween. As soon as it was dusk, the streets would fill up with children in their costumes (or in the case of the housing kids, ripped t-shirt, their mother's eyeliner and lipstick for face paint and pillowcases for candy bags), and take over the streets. It was a magnificent site, every house was open, all the children knew who gave the best candy (the house across Fern Park gave candy apples and the house down by K's market handed out quarters one year!). After we made our rounds in a four-block area, we headed home to view our candy treasures and see who made out the best. Mom would separate the candies by type (this was before concerns of people poisoning candy) into large plastic containers that we would dip into in the following weeks. Chocolate bars and other level "A" candies into one container (that went the fastest), and lollipops, suckers, gum and other level "B" candies (gosh, I hated candy corn), into another container. If we were lucky, there more than 2 containers. I LOVED Halloween-me and my siblings and friends enjoyed an evening of being loose on the streets of Kalihi and when we got older, we threw our own Halloween costume parties and cruised Waikiki to check out all of the freaks. It's different now for Sonny, but there are still ways to make it memorable for him, something he can look back at and smile about, when he's my age.

We made sure he had a number of things to do over the weekend and lots of places to wear his outfit and lots of candy to obtain-mission accomplished! So this Sunday ended up being like any other Sunday-laundry, church, except I wore a new burnt orange blouse for the occasion, the Mirandas gave us two delicious loaves of homemade pumpkin bread (if it had chocolate chips, it would be KILLER!) and Sonny gave a talk on how we can help others come unto Christ and did a good job. Until next year, Happy Halloween everyone!