Thursday, October 29, 2009

One trick, no treats

Earlier this week I read a blog discussion about participating in Halloween or not. (We do not.)

Reading and commenting on that discussion got me to thinking (and laughing) about our little no-Halloween faux pas a few years ago.

I was 36 1/2 weeks pregnant with Alan, when early in the morning on October 28th (a Saturday) I started having regular contractions. We timed them for a while, and then decided, yep - we better go to the hospital.

We called my parents to come over and watch Dale, and set off excitedly to the hospital, well before daylight, wondering if we'd have a baby that day.

A few hours later I'd been all checked out, confirmed to be having 'real' contractions, and been given some meds to stop them. We just weren't close enough to my due date for my doctor to be comfortable letting us go ahead and deliver, and he wasn't interested in sending a baby off to Children's NICU that day. (Ironic, isn't it, that Alan ended up at Children's after all, just a few months later?)

Anyway, we spent the biggest part of the day at the hospital working through all that, and got home around 4:00 that afternoon. It was our town's designated "trick-or-treat" night and we were tired and especially
not interested in visitors, even more than in past years.

We went ahead with our previous plan of the 3 of us cozying up in the bedroom in the back of the house with a pizza and a movie.

But then... the doorbell kept ringing!

We couldn't believe how bold and frankly how rude people would be to stop at an undecorated house with no lights on. Goodness! Were they that desperate for candy or what?

Imagine how sheepish we felt when after ignoring and griping about several doorbell rings over the course of an hour or so we discovered....
.... the porch light was on.

It had been on since we left before dark that morning. When the sun came up, the sensor made the light go off. When the sun went down, after we were all tucked away in our bedroom, the switch was still on and well.... that little light was shining a 'welcome' beacon to all who passed.

Oops. My apologies to all the kiddos we ignored that night.

Note to self: check the porch light before 'cozying-up' this Saturday night!

2 comments:

Cindy said...

Now, that sounds like something I would do. I do not do the Halloween candy thing anymore either because...hmm, recently the trick or treaters seem kind of big and old...you know like 200 pounds and 25 years old maybe? Anyway, one year I had everything dark and quiet and was holed up in my living room watching movies and the doorbell kept ringing just like yours!! I thought the same thing you did "Who keeps doing that? Those 40 year olds?" and then my phone started ringing. I answered and my sister immediately said "I am sitting in your drive way. Would you open the door, please?"

*Mirage* said...

Whoopsie! Lol!

The kids here do that with the porch light off. I've had them shining flashlights in the windows and throwing things at the house because they could see the tv light was on but the porch and all the house lights were off and yet they wouldn't go away. It gets downright scary sometimes. :(