Fall Traditions

My family, like most families, has some traditions.  Some of those traditions are specifically for fall.  So I guess I might as well start with our September traditions, even though September first isn’t technically the start of fall.

On the first day of school my mom always gets pictures of my sister and I, dressed up in our meticulously picked out first-day-of-school outfits.  Usually we have two separate pictures and one together but this year I started to ride the early bus, but my sister was still on the late bus so we couldn’t get a picture together.  

Then later in September is my birthday and my sister’s birthday.  We always have a party, plus the birthday girl can choose where we go to eat or what meal Mom makes for dinner that day.  My favorite place to go eat is Moes.  I absolutely LOVE the tacos there.  Or if I choose not to go out I usually ask Mom to make chicken enchiladas.  My sister usually chooses from three options.  The first is Buffalo Wild Wings.  Second is Casa Tequila.  Or Mom’s hamburger and noodles.   My favorite of those is Casa Tequila, it’s a Mexican restaurant, which is my favorite.
We also go apple picking in September.  My favorite apples are Honeycrisp apples. But unfortunately we can't pick Honeycrips by ourselves so we decided to pick some different apples including 20 oz. Pippens, Ozark Golds, and Courtlands.  It amazes me the places you can find apples, way up at the top of the tree, or down on the bottom branches.  And then there are things we do with the apples we pick.  My mom, my sister, and I always make apple crisp.  It's not my favorite dessert but the rest of my family loves it.

Later in the year, well actually October, once the leaves have fallen Dad, my sister, and I rake up the leaves at the bottom of our hill.  Then we run down the hill and jump in the leaves.  This is one of the best parts of fall, with leaves flying every where, leaves in our clothes and in our hair.  We have leaf fights, where we through leaves at each other until the air is full of drifting leaves.   That’s usually when we have to rake the leaves back up.  Put since I have a funny Dad he always rakes the leaves on top of us so that our whole bodies, minus our heads, are buried in red, orange, yellow, and brown leaves.

Now as we approach late October Halloween is coming up.  And in the great Halloween tradition my family aways carves pumpkins.  This year mine was a ninja with his sword raised over his head.  Moms was a moon with stars on the back to make a shadow.  My sisters was a moon and stars too, but hers had a cute little cat with a curvy tail sitting on the moon.  Dad’s was the most intricate, as usual, this year it was a swimmer , a biker, and a runner for the three sports in a triathlon (my Dad is a dedicated triathlete).   His design was so complex he spent half the night picking away at it with some sort of vibrating power saw.

The week before Halloween we start booing.  My sister and I will make a sign, and fill bags with candy and a sign. Then at night we walk to our targets house, scope out a good hiding place and attack!  Either me or my sister will drop the candy and start running to our hiding spot.  The other one will ring the door bell and dash off.  We always get a hiding spot that we can see the front door.  We watch and wait.  Sometimes people will come out and try to find us, but the only one who ever found us was Riah, most often people will take the candy and not even try to find us though.  

And what could be next but Halloween!  Our Halloween isn’t much different than a regular Halloween though.  My friends and I race around the subdivision, sometimes with my sister and Dad in tow, sometimes not.  We try to collect as much candy as we can in the short period of time we have allotted to trick-or-treat. And of course we go through the local haunted house.  

This haunted house isn’t in some big warehouse but it’s just as fun as the big huge ones.  The same family every year decorates the inside of their house with a different theme every year.  Last year it was a creepy carnival. They had a super tall man who got his head cut off by a ceiling fan, some kind of animal that ate humans (that one “escaped” and scared the daylights out of some kids), and some other cool things.  But the best part is the candy at the end.

So there it is,  the weird, the wacky, and the fairly normal fall traditions my family has.  But what ever else you can say about us, you can’t deny that we always have tons of fun!