" A Halloween Dilemma "

I have what I guess one would call a dilemma. A Halloween dilemma. I shall try to explain. You see for many years I have decorated the house or apartment , depending on where I was living at that time , for Halloween. When the first child came along almost thirty-two years ago , I found myself decorating even more . Both the inside and the outside of the house.

Year after year I would always buy some new decorations to add to my collection . I still have all of them as I have taken very good care of them each year. There are many that you can't even find in the stores anymore .

These decorations are not what you would call cutesy . No, they are all scary . Since we bought our own home ten years ago , my husband has gotten into this practice with me as well. four years ago he went so far as to cut out old tombstones out of wood which I pained black and then painted crazy names on them like " Hacker Cough, 1808-1829 " and " I. Ben Better ". Some of them have little poems that I made up like, " Lazy Bastard- here lies a man that had nowhere to go, he sat and pondered all of his life and never had anything to show ".

Well you get the idea . My husband and I have made I think, about a dozen or more of these. We put some on each side of the porch in the lawn with dark purple lights laying on the ground around them . And then comes the fun part . We rake piles and piles of leaves in the shape of graves ! Then I carefully put cobwebs all around the tombstones. From there we hang scary heads , witches , and skeletons all over the porch, fence and front of the house. I could go on and on but I think you can picture this by now.

It usually takes us two to three days to complete this scary vision. Another two days to disassemble ! It has grown quite a bit over the last ten years and the neighborhood children just love it as do the adults that stop to read all of the tombstones.

My next door neighbor being one to get into the spirit as well , also decks out her house for Halloween. Sometimes I think that we compete to try and be scarier than the other . Together though our houses look great ! And every year the kids just love it.

This annual tradition is something that my now fourteen year old Katie has always loved as well. With all of the orange and purple lights turned on and the house lights turned off , it looks very haunted . Oh I forgot the music. We play spooky sounds and music c.d.'s while the trick or treaters are out and about the neighborhood.

Two years ago the local newspaper took photos of mine and my neighbors houses. They weren't featured in the paper but they did post them on their website.

I have always taken my three children trick or treating. Every year. I always dress up too. Every year. The first year that I met my second husband , while still living in Chicago , he drove right past me and the kids as he didn't recognize us ! I was dressed as a man, beard and all . That was a fun year.

When my oldest daughter, Ginny, still lived with us ten years ago, she still dressed up to take her little sis trick or treating . Those days are gone now . Katie doesn't trick or treat anymore . They have parties at school for the teens . My grandchildren live in another town so they trick or treat where they live.

It is the end of my " young " children days. And I am getting tired. All of that decorating is a lot of work. I am not sure that I feel up to decorating this year. Katie doesn't care if I do or not. She will probably go to a Halloween Party at school again this year to be with her friends.

Now here is my dilemma . I have been pondering this situation for a couple of weeks now. In case you have not read any of my past posts I will tell you this first. My son Frank and his family live in a one-hundred plus year old house . The previous owners of that house which is right in the center of their town, used to go all out decorating it for Halloween. It was known back then as the Halloween house.

My daughter-in-law Amy has asked me ever so sweetly if I was going to decorate for Halloween this year. I told her at that time that I really hadn't thought about it yet. But I have been thinking about it since.

It seems that she and my granddaughter Sarah would like to borrow my decorations if I am not going to decorate. They would like to make their house look scary this year. My fear is that if I don't decorate this year, that I never will again. My other fear is that if I loan the decorations to them that I might all of a sudden get in the mood to decorate and it would be to late.

They said that they would take good care of them and return them when they were done but if I don't decorate anymore then I may as well just give the decorations to them. I just don't know what to do. It would be somewhat of the end of an era for me. Not quite sure I am ready to give it up yet, but the thought of not doing all of that work this year is kind of nice.

This is my Halloween dilemma !