Halloween 2015 Recap Chi, IL Style

Hope everyone's Halloween weekend was a blast. Despite a chilly, rainy start here in Chi, IL, things cleared up around 5pm and my Rainbow Puking Gnome from Gravity Falls and my Steampunk made the rounds with a pack of friends. Then they returned to a party filled with loads of food and new and old school friends dating back to their preschool days.

Things I learned this Halloween:

• My MIL didn't know narwals existed. "Are those actually real or is it some Star Warsie kind of thing?" 

• There IS actually a candy called Zombie Food with quote unquote "milk chocolate brains, heart & feet filled with oozie red caramel"
• Teens can make a seriously scream inducing haunted basement on a shoe string budget.

• The rejects from the Jelly Belly Factory in southern Wisconsin are repackaged and sold as "Belly Flops". Those misshapen mashups are just as tasty.
• Steampunks are not as well known among the general populace as they are in our circle of friends. Dugan got a lot of bewildered, blank stares and a few educated guesses on his costume like.... Are you: Time Traveler Dude, Watchmaker's Apprentice, Gears Guy, Steamboat Punk?
• You're never too old to dress up for Halloween!

The party full of tween & teen kids made an amazingly creepy cool haunted house in the basement then stayed down there to hang out and get some space from the parents upstairs. Meanwhile, we caught up with loads of our favorite families we never see face to face anymore, now that the playground pickup days are past. 

The kids hung till around 11:30 and my husband was right, that's the longest time we've been at anyone's house without seeing one or both kids popping up and saying "I'm bored. When are we leaving." We finally had to drag the kids home because our son was leading early school tours for perspective 7th graders and their families in the morning.

We dropped the kids off, let the pups out, and hit the final 2 hours of our usual haunts, our friends' annual party on Bernard Street. This two block stretch is a renowned Chicago trick or treat mecca, where the neighbors dress up and deck out their homes in a big way. There are hundreds if not thousands of trick or treaters and our friends always have a big bash till the wee hours of the morning. It was midnight, so we almost didn't chance it, but we called over there and things were still half way hopping.

The husband and kids were asleep already, but amazingly enough, the wife was still up and there were about 10 friends left standing, and they enthusiastically begged us to come over. Better late than never, so we swung for a few beers and rocked their strobe lit, living room with a drunken, group Rocky Horror "Sweet Transvestite" sing along. Meanwhile the wife went upstairs to wake her husband to come down and say hey to the latecomers but she fell asleep in the process, while he rallied and came back down to hang out. Around the 3rd time in 2 hours that their iPod began to loop and play Ministry's "Every Day is Halloween" and Thriller yet again, we grabbed a few cookies and Affy Tapples for the kids and hit the road.

Check back soon. We'll have a big photo and video recap of our adventures at the first teen Redmoon Skelabration party on Friday night.

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