halloween...

my sister and i always went to the fall carnival (or whatever it was called) at our church when we were little for that holiday where it's too scary to trick or treat in your own neighborhood halloween. this year my mom asked if we wanted to go since the kids are old enough, and i thought that they would enjoy it. ok bare with me.....these are my memories of the fbc's fall carnival circa 1985.....

• different games around the perimeter of our church gym
• lost of familiar faces
• the infamous cake walk in the center of the gym
• about 100ish people
• get some candy and go home

so that's the memory that i conjured up, and was expecting to recreate with my kids. updated of course. well the five of us and our friend meredith (who had a very similar (if not the exact one) "fall festival" experience growing up in houston) pull up to my parents church and...red flag #1...the parking lot is unbelievably full complete with parking attendants. for whatever reason we decide to go forth. we jump in the line of people who...red flag #2...they have filtering in and out in a very specific mapped out kinda way to try to make it to the other parking lot to meet up with my parents, sister, brother-in-law and niece. it takes us about 25 minutes, when it should've been about a 3 min walk. the games that used to be fully confined to the gymnasium are now spread out ALL over the church. each of the games and jumpy houses have AT LEAST a 10 person long line. we pet some animals, jump in one jumpy house, and (I) decide that there are just WAY too many people there. so now we have to make our way back through the maze to our car which takes another 25 minutes. on the way home i ask lanny how many people he thought were there, and his answer...."oh at least mulitple thousands". i say, "like 2?" and he says, "more like 5" uh....it's come a long way since 1985. anyway, we came home and trick or treated in our sweet little neighborhood (where we should've stayed all along), had a GREAT time, ate some candy, took baths, and went to bed! (owen kept petting this poor little guy and saying, "mommy look, i'm petting this ghost, i'm petting this ghost."  appropriate.