As a kid, every year I hoped for reasonably warm, dry weather for "Fright Night."  Unfortunately, living in Chicago then, the chance of that in late October was slim.  More often than not, our Halloween fun would be dampened by cold and/or rain and our costumes would be hidden under layers of coats/raincoats, but we still found ways to have fun.  

     Growing up and having kids of our own (and now grandkids), I still have the same hope of mild weather.  It's always more fun for the kids when they can enjoy the evening and show off their costumes without freezing to death or being all bundled up in coats.  Luckily, here in Virginia, the odds are much better and we've had 6-7 beautiful Halloween days/nights in a row......I'm keeping my fingers crossed for 2008 as well! 

     Our first Halloween away from Chicago was in Denver Colorado in 1979 where I was stationed for a school after commissioning.  We were living in a very nice apartment complex in Aurora just outside Denver and there were a lot of young couples with kids living in the complex.  Carrie was still a baby then but Brandy and Denise were both old enough to enjoy Trick-or-Treating around the complex.  Late October weather in Denver was pleasant and I remember it as rather warm during the day and cool but still comfortable in the early evening when the kids Trick-or-Treated.  It did get rather chilly later at night but by then the kids were done with the evening's festivities.  We had a lot of ghost and goblin visitors that evening and I was kept busy answering the door while Hil took the kids out to get their share of the candy.

     When we lived in Biloxi, about the only thing that would spoil Halloween was a downpour or a hurricane and late October evenings in Southern Mississippi were normally still shirt-sleeve weather.  If anything, it was sometimes a bit on the warm side for some of the costumes. 

     While we were there we threw a couple Halloween costume parties at our house.  They were always popular with the flyers at the 7^th ACCS where I was assigned and with the nurses at Gulf Coast Community Hospital where Hil worked.  One year, one of my squadron-mates came as the Cookie Monster.  His costume was a sort of a jumpsuit totally covered with long, thick synthetic blue fur with a huge Cookie Monster head which totally encased his own head.  By the end of the evening he was drenched with sweat and was about dying in that thing but he was a good sport and kept it on all evening. 

     Hawaii was pretty-much always beautiful weather for Halloween (and most any other time as well).  Halloween wasn't quite as big a thing with the locals but there were a lot of military families living in Mililani where we owned a house and we always had a pretty good turn-out for Trick-or-Treat.  We had a couple Halloween parties at our house there as well, continuing the tradition of inviting the people who worked with me at Pacific Command and the nurses that worked with Hil at Queen Emma Hospital in Honolulu.  We had a 16x35' in-ground pool in the back yard with a diving board (it tool up almost half of our Hawaii-sized back yard) and everyone brought bathing suits.  When the costumes just got too unbearably warm, a quick dip in the pool was just the ticket to cool off. 

     For our first Halloween there, we decided to throw one, it was the first of many parties we would throw in that house over the years.  That afternoon, as Hil was making veggies and other "finger food" for the party, one of our daughters yelled that green water was coming up into their bathtub.  It seems the peels Hil was putting into the disposal had clogged the pipes.  I had to find the outside drain plug (not that easy since we'd only been in the house a short while and I had to hunt all over to find it) and feed the garden hose into it to blast the clog out. 

     If that weren't enough, about half an hour after the party started, the entire neighborhood lost power.  It was off for almost three hours and we had to resort to several large candles for inside lighting.  We found out later that a Gecko had gotten into the works at the main power sub-station and shorted it out.  That was an "interesting" Halloween, to be sure.

     When we moved to South Carolina, we found the weather there not much different than that in Mississippi, though less humid.  Our kids were old enough by then that they didn't Trick-or-Treat any more but there were still a lot of smaller kids in the neighborhood so we always had lots of little ghost and goblin visitors to pass treats out to.