The Glensheen Spooktacular

I saw an article in the newspaper about Glensheen Mansion’s first ever Halloween event, a special tour of the grounds at night to look at more than 600 intricately carved jack-o-lanterns on display.  I thought it looked neat, but given that Dr. Peds is working all weekend, I quickly decided I was not motivated to try that kind of thing with all the kidlets by myself and put it far to the back of my mind.  But yesterday afternoon, one of my neighbors asked if we wanted to get together with another neighbor family and all go together.  I jumped at the idea, and at dusk we all started loading kids into vans to caravan down to the lakeshore.  Happy day!  Dr. Peds was even able to join us with his pager.

I am here to tell you, that this was really, really neat.  It kind of felt like a Christmas light tour, but way, way neater because it wasn’t cheesy at all.  And it wasn’t scary.  It was just kajillions of amazing pumpkins lining everything and grouped together.  Some of them were so detailed!  I could have spent hours examining all of them closely and taking tons of extended exposure pictures, but alas, we were there with nine children under the age of ten, who were very excitable, so there was significant crowd control involved and constant checking to make sure we did have all nine children with us in the dark.

The path ended with bonfires and Smore making, with fire dancers just a short bit away.  The kidlets were pretty entranced with the fire dancing.  It was so graceful, and really quite pleasing to watch.  YaYa, however, hates fire dancing, and fire of any kind, so she spent some time hanging out next to the building as FAR away from the fire as possible.  Regardless, it was a super duper fun outing.  I hope they do it again next year.  There were lots and lots of people there!