By Denise Bell
Every morning I get up at 5:45 am to start preparing for the day. One of the first things I do is take my daughter to volleyball practice at 6:15 am. I slip on comfy flip flops as I go out the garage door each morning, until now. I opened up the door this morning and was hit by a rush of cold air 
which told me….It’s here! Fall is here! I live in Idaho, so when the weather changes, it changes fast and it’s drastic. I love the change of seasons. They make my surroundings fresh and new every few months. My favorite change is the change from summer to fall. The beautiful trees in the mountains are changing from a Lush Green to Autumn Orange, Yellow, and Red. The crispness in the air reminds me that one of my favorite holidays is just around the corner. Halloween, its here too, so I better be getting ready.
Halloween at my home as a child was always one of the best days of the year. I went to school and did all the normal Halloween school things, but the excitement grew as the day went on because at our house Halloween was special. The anticipation was just about too much for my brothers, my sister, and me. We ran through the door at the end of the day knowing exactly what my mom would be doing. She’d have them all lined up and raising, just waiting for us t
o fry and glaze them. Can you smell the wonderful aroma? You guessed it, homemade doughnuts, and the secret family recipe from Grandma Allen. Of course, she would have a few already fried laying out on the table for us to eat. Yum! They were the best. That wasn’t the end of the fun night. Dad would take us to each of our grandparent’s homes and they always had extra special treats for us. We would have Chili for dinner and then we would Trick or Treat the Neighborhood for hours. Everybody in our neighborhood knew and liked our dad, so we always thought that we were given better treats than anyone else. They’d usually give him a treat too. These are some of the greatest memories of my life, maybe that’s why Fall is my favorite times of the year.
Well, life has sped up for me since the doughnut years. I don’t know how my mom had time to make homemade doughnuts on Halloween day. So I share the memories with my children and I always buy a box of doughnuts. 
To this day, when my kids visit my parents on Halloween, they receive a doughnut and some of the best treats Hershey’s has available. I know my kids love Halloween just as much as I do. My husband and I want to make sure our kids remember our family traditions as vividly as I remember mine. So we have created many traditions that we practice throughout the month of October. The first one is that we create our own costumes. The next one is that we go to the store and pick out our pumpkins, (this year we started a new tradition, growing our own pumpkins). We decorate the house. My husband and my boys love to go to the store to buy the candy together. We make Halloween sugar cookies and decorate them, way before Halloween, and then we share them with the neighbors. 
My favorite tradition is carving the pumpkins together. What a mess, what a laugh, what a memory. Of course, there are the traditions that are saved especially for Halloween day and night. Visiting grandparents, doughnuts, and of course Trick or Treating the neighborhood for hours. We also have a huge neighborhood dinner. We all bring a pot of soup and rolls. Then we all sit in a big circle and let the kids go from family to family to receive their treats. So, I think that my kids will have plenty of wonderful memories.
In time, sad but true, the memories fade. As my kids are getting older I can’t seem to remember what my oldest son was for Halloween when he was seven and neither can he. If I didn’t write it down, I would have forgotten that the bear costume that I made for my little girl looked more like a cat costume and that my father-in-law asked me why I put a hot pad on my babies head with her pumpkin costume. It was supposed to be the green stem on the top.
These memories make me smile and I don’t want to forget. I am so glad that as all of these traditions have rolled around each October that I have taken pictures and scrapbooked them. My kids now have a tradition of looking at the Halloween pictures each year and they really get a kick out of the memories they bring back. We love to sit around as a family and talk about the costumes, the messes, the candy, and most of all the people that we shared one of our favorite holidays with.
As Halloween comes and goes this year, I hope that you will be inspired to keep and establish great traditions in your homes and that the pictures that you take will help those traditions become memories that will last a lifetime. Happy Halloween!
Happy Scrapping to all of you!
Denise
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