The best Halloween yet!

I will admit that things started heading out for the worst Halloween ever but it took a sharp turn at the corner of  Awesome and Cool and ended up completely different.

Here is the short list of obstacles we had to overcome to get to the Awesome Halloween position:

• It snowed....LOTS of snow. We only got an inch or two, but EVERYWHERE around us was covered in up to 14 inches or more!

This is the weather on Halloween. 

Surrounded on all sides by a foot or more of snow.

• After the snow, it rained constnatly. It was raining right up till 1:30pm on Halloween. I had exactly 3 hours to get what I could out. I had almost given up on putting out the animatronic stuff, but at the last minute I did. Still, I only managed to put out at 70% of what I had planned.

• Due to the rain, I had to re-run several electrical cords to keep them out of puddles and standing water. I was unable to put my fog machine in the manhole cover with the escaping skele because the water main was flooded to the lip, but M saved the day by getting a 6lbs chunk of dry ice that did a fantastic job! The rain has also caused damage to many props that I will have to sort out next year.

• It was cold! WICKED cold! 30 degrees and the windchill was even worse. We could not put on our zombie makeup because of this. It would have cracked and peeled and our noses ran like faucets when we stepped back in the house. I went with a skeletal, faceless wraith and M was a spider.

• We assumed that there would be no kids due to the weather, cold, and a thousand other curses. Boy was I wrong, We had record numbers. We actually ran out of candy! First time ever! Not sure if the publicity in the local paper, or the new facebook page, or maybe even the blog was the reason, but they came in droves!
• It started to sprinkle right around 8 but only slightly. Still, it greatly impacted my time to shoot video and take pictures. We also could not prepare the skull torches due to the constant damp and rainy conditions.

Like I said, there was some obstacles but we pulled it off and it was great. Hundreds of kids, parents running for their life or trying to run into the house to get away from me, and mom continued our age old Meade tradition of making soup beans and cornbread and helping to hand out treats.

We also had our favorite future Haunter come over. My Goddaughter Addison. 

I had also invested a ton of money into the new Fog Machine and a state of the art timer. It paid off big time and kept the yard nice and creepy without me touching it once!

What makes this the best Halloween ever is the fact that I asked M to marry me. I had it planned out diffidently in my mind and I had plan to do it dressed as a zombie, but I still pulled it off. After we had shut down for the night, I asked her if she would help me shoot a quick vlog about the haunt. She never skipped a beat and grabbed the camera to help me. I had her ring on a severed finger and she had no clue what was to come. Here is the video (warning it is cheesy and corny... you have been warned!):

I am off work today so I can try to put up my soggy and soaked outdoor decorations and start the long process of storing our beloved Halloween treasures for another year. I had a friend ask me how long it takes to make our house look "normal" again. I replied, "Well usually I start in early September and it stay normal until November 1st"

It will be a few days before I can post any good night shots or vids of the haunt. We have lots of cleaning up to do and I have to work Friday. I may not be able to post much in the next few days as I try to get a decent video compiled of the haunt. 

For those of you suffering from post Halloween blues... never fear!

Hope you all had a wicKED Halloween!