Thursday, November 1, 2007

Halloween and this past week

This past week has been a little hectic and crazy. Today however is the point where Justin and I can breathe again. And breathing deep is a GOOD feeling.

Let us go over the highlights (in no particular order other than my "mind like a sieve" memory):

Paul, from England, came into town last Thursday. And hopefully Paul has been having a good time. We have taken him to two, not just one, corn maze...in the same day nonetheless. He carved his own pumpkin for the first time ever. He did an amazing job and says that he will carve one next year. Go pumpkins! I have taken Paul shopping, twice so far. Once for food shopping this past weekend and once because he has a suite case to fill up of clothes. After all the Pound is about a 2:1 ratio against the Dollar.

Carol and Shawn came up from Placerville on Friday night. Carol wasn't feeling well so she stopped by on Saturday for long enough to walk through out Haunted House. I'm glad she was able to do that and see what the fuss was all about.

Justin's parents, Grandma and Aunt came up on Friday night (for the weekend) as well to help out with the Haunted House and to celebrate Justin's Birthday early (his real birthday is next week, and I already have purchased his presents). Justin's parents helped out and had fun when we opened our Haunted House on Saturday.

Shannon, Justin's sister, came up the weekend of the 20th to help us out in setting up. She had fun, but I think that without her help we could not have been ready in time. We know it wasn't a party visit for her, but hopefully it was somewhat fun.

Our Haunted House has been in the newspapers: the Fernley Leader Courier, for 3 weeks in a row; in the Reno Journal Gazette, the weekend edition; the Lahontan Valley News, 2 weeks in a row. We also had Channel 4 news come out this past Monday to interview us and film the Haunted House. We were featured throughout the day on Tuesday.

Let us get to the numbers of the visitors we have had: on Saturday we had a total of 389. The line was down our driveway, past our front yard fence and halfway onto our next door neighbor's sidewalk. We were letting people in slowly so each of our amazing actors had time to properly scare each visitor. We actually had about 5 kids from the neighborhood waiting in line for a hour so they could be the first ones through...they were chanting "open." That is what make putting in all of this effort worth it.

Then yesterday. First, it was a crazy night. We had a line just about around the corner. Nuts. Just Nuts. People were waiting in line for about 30 minutes, in the freezing cold. We are so happy that people thought our little project was worth waiting that long. Then in the middle of all of this, someone (probably accidentally) pulled down one of our walls, which stalled the line about 5 or 10 minutes. Justin and Steve quickly fixed it and we were ready to roll again.

The grand total for yesterday was....drum roll please...exactly 700. Taking our grand total for this Halloween to 1089! This met and exceeded Justin's expectations. He was looking for 1000. We passed it. Now, as always, I did not count the people who went through more than once...or more than 8 times...because there were a few of those.

Let me now talk about our actors as well as the folks who helped us. There were folks who helped us set up and there were folks who volunteered to be our actors and some that did both. THANK YOU! This is a full group effort lead by Justin's twisted mind. And none of this could be done without any of you. Really. Justin and I could never do something like this on our own.

Please take a look at our photos from this Halloween, they are the candid shots. We will take photos of our Haunted House and put those online.

http://picasaweb.google.com/melaniehanly/Halloween2007

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