Halloween 2009, Rock of Love Submitted by: Jim Ford - 03/05/10 2:25 pm

Halloween 2009, Rock of Love Boo! Halloween is one of my favorite times of year. Haley and I love decorating, carving pumpkins, scaring kids, and generally having a great time. This year we headed out for our annual trek to the pumpkin patch the weekend before Halloween. Then the night of, I went nuts scaring kids and helping throw a party at my neighbor's where we all danced and boogied down till the WEEE hours of the morning. I wish I had Haley on the actual night of Halloween but it never seems to work out that way. She LOVES helping me run the lights and make scary noises into the microphone scaring people. But since she usually can't be there, we like to head out to a pumpkin patch and corn maze. Normally it's Johnsons Family Pumpkin patch out towards Greenbrier, AR but this year we tried Schaeffers Farm in Mayflower. It was HUGE. I mean, literally thousands of people out there. And the corn maze, unreal. They have a big area to choose pumpkins, check out some farm animals, take pictures, etc. The pumpkins along with everything else they were selling were too expensive considering just being there cost $12 but we had a great time just being goofy together. There were literally acres and acres to this corn maze. It rained for 40 days and nights in Arkansas that month or so and it was super muddy in this field. We rolled our jeans up and did our best but had to get off the path into the corn many times to avoid sinking. We had a great time navigating together, taking pictures, laughing, talking, and being Haley and Daddy together. Amongst the throngs of people, we captured a couple of nature shots including a close up of a corn stalk and another of the fields blowing in the wind against a backdrop of a post at this farm. Before we headed home I snapped this one of 2 pumpkins stacked on top of each other that reminded me of the lips in the Rocky Horror Picture Show movie. Once home we decorated the house and carved the pumpkins. This was Haley's first year to totally pick out, draw, gut, and carve her own pumpkin completely by herself. All I did was cut the top out for her for safety using the big knife. We pretended we were playing with real "guts" and flung a little at each other. While she attended to every tiny detail on hers that looks suprisingly like the guy from Deliverance, I pulled out my shop jigsaw to make swift work of mine. It left pulp all over my new jackolantern which Haley suggested we leave on there for a more scary grotesque look. My baby is so cool! Here we are showing off our creations. The day of Halloween I RACED home to finish getting set up for the kids. Got the candy out, lights on, sound system going, smoke machine, you name it. I changed into my creepy ghoul costume with wireless microphone and glowing eyes underneath with an effects processor on my voice. People came by as usual to take pictures and many were terrified! I had 150 plus kids and as usual many of the parents were scared and running off as well. I guess I'm becoming an old softy because if the little ones cried, or were TOO scared to come up, I'd lift my mask, turn off the hidden microphone and make them at ease. Some of them STILL cried. My sister Jane always told me I scared little kids. Heh heh. After having my traditional homeemade Halloween chili, I carried carried my DJ sound system, lights, and decorations over to the neighbors and set up for our 4th annual neighborhood "after party". I decided to ditch the Lt. Dangler costume of Reno 911 fame from last year and opted for the Bret Michaels "Rock of Love" look. The lead singer of the 80's pop hair band, Poison, I have to think my friend Allison (aka Lil Al) for putting this one together for me. Our close-knit group of neighbors banded together and with my lights and music... along with a generous portion of my famous Jim Jones Jungle punch (190 proof and other stuff!)... partied and danced until the wee hours of the morning. Here you see my neighbors Kim and Richard. He had a really cool gold mask on with a tuxedo. I hadn't quite learned to take night pictures so the blurring of the shot made it look like the mask was melting onto his skin! Next up, and I almost died laughing, is Mike and Cindy with her sister. Mike came dressed as Father Guido Sarducchi from Saturday night live! I loved it! Cindy was a boxer and her sister a pirate. We got the dancefloor rockin' immediately. The Wicked Witch (aka Gary) showed up and for several minutes I had no idea who it was. He always goes all out. I mean, can you even tell that is a guy? Then his wife Vampire Queen Kellye made her entrance with a wig and full get up. Pretty much everyone had a great costume. Kellye got out their to boogie down to some Michael Jackson and as the night wore on, Michael took my super cool Brett Michaels wig and shades to become the late Shannon Hoon (remember the dancing bumble be video to No Rain?). What a blast! I have a great group of neighbors and we had a blast. Clean-up and recovery was an all day event the next day but well worth it. Thanks to all my witches, vampires, evil robots, priests, boxers, cereal killers, and others for such a great time. Can't wait to do it again next year! Halloween is my favorite fun holiday every year! Log in and leave some comments or go to my pictures page to get more details on many of the pics you see here.

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