I love my neighbors. Love, love, love them. From the nice lady who lives across the street and gives my girls books and dolls to the couple next door who’s kids have babysat for us since Princess was a tiny tot to the woman down the street who runs Pixie’s preschool, I love them all. I live in a great neighborhood, and I’m very grateful for the good neighbors I have who never once complain about my freakish ways.
During the month of October, however, I am especially grateful for the family who lives next door to us, because they put up one killer Halloween display.
They start decorating their yard at the beginning of the month, but honestly, preparations start long before then. All through August and September, whenever I’d walk by their house and see the garage door open, I’d catch glimpses of stuff being built – tombstones, graveyard fences, an animatronic witch. My neighbors do buy some of their Halloween stuff, but a lot of it is home made, and the stuff they buy they tend to modify to make it even better.
All through October, their yard just gets creepier and creepier. Every afternoon when the girls get home from school, they ask if they can go next door and see the neighbors’ yard (there is always something new). I’ve told my neighbors they need to sell tickets to people for tours of their display, and my girls would be first in line to get season passes. We really can’t stay away from their yard!
They also decorate inside the house, which has given me a heart attack on more than one occasion. Every year, without fail, I look next door and see someone dark and disturbing lurking in their sunroom. I get all panicked, thinking either a burglar or a serial killer has broken into their house. Then just as I’m about to dial 911, I realize it’s October and the strange man in the dark trench coat and black hat is just one of their animatronic figures they’ve put up inside the house.
The decorations in the yard are usually done to a certain point by the last week of Halloween. Then the day of Halloween, my neighbors pull out all the stops and set up all their animatronic, life-size figures in the driveway, or else they convert their garage into a haunted house that visitors can walk through. One year, they set up their entire house as a tourist attraction. It was nuts!
This year, my neighbors have outdone themselves. The graveyard in the front has a large “stone” entry way, decorated with skeleton bones and body parts, topped by a vulture. They’ve got an evil zombie scarecrow in one corner of the graveyard, and lots of new tombstones and skeletons and ghosts set up. I’m still waiting to see the animatronic witch. From what my neighbors tell me, she’s going to be spectacular!
Here are a few pics of my neighbors’ freaky yard 😉
You see how huge this is? I want a front yard just like this someday!
That is nice (you know, in the creepy spooky way). Do they do anything to the trees too? Cause some erosion cloth shredded up a bit makes wonderful spooky spanish moss type stuff.
(In other news, on the Wii Fit Plus, do you have to unlock all the exercises like you do in the regular Fit?)
Mich, the whole yard is a work in progress right up until Halloween, when they then usually ramp up the display to transform the place into a haunted house of some kind. I have no idea what they'll be adding through the rest of the month beyond a bunch of lifesize animatronic horror figures!
As for Wii Fit Plus, if you had already unlocked the games in the original, they're already unlocked when you start the new game. But the UPPER levels on the NEW games have to be unlocked by playing the basic levels a couple of times, and the new mind/body test games have to be done in the body test first before you can unlock them in the practice area of the game.
Did any of that make sense?