The Day After Halloween

We woke up on November 1st exhausted.  But we pulled ourselves out of bed to get Emma to a swim meet.  She did great and we had fun watching her.  She was excited that her Ma & Pa from The Journey, the Lopez’s, came to cheer her on as well.

Then we went home and started Leap of Fright clean-up.  What a job.  I was so ready for it to all leave my house.  I had already started taking down my own Halloween decorations on Halloween night, I was done!  I was especially ready to get all this out of my living room.

Thankfully some very nice friends came to help take it all down.  The cardboard and visqueen come down much faster than they go up.

Then it was time to dry off and roll up that big piece of tunnel visqueen.  It takes several people to do it!

Then all the props are carefully organized and put away.  There is a method to it!

It was so nice to have it all down, but it was all still filling up the garage.

That’s ok, by the end of the day it was all out of my house.  Wahoo!  Unfortunately, it took two more weeks before the garage was cleaned out.  It all got loaded on a truck and taken to the Sunderland’s where it belongs in their big shop.  Our garage was finally empty and we could park our cars in it again.  Happiness!

Now if only our back yard grass could have recovered so quickly.  It might be officially done and is a big mud pit.  Sigh.  Like I’ve said a million times, it’s a good thing the haunted house is fun! 

Leap of Fright 2014

Leap of Fright 2014 was a success. 

An exhausting but fun success.  This year was a little different.  Peter and Lee had opposite schedules so had to work on it a lot by themselves.  Lynn would join them when he could.  It’s much more fun doing the work together, so they boys didn’t enjoy the set up nearly as much.  Of course it didn’t help that the weather did a number on a lot of our hard work. Lee and Peter put up the tunnel at the beginning of the month.

About a week later it was down due to a lot of rain and very strong winds.  It also took down visqueen in other places.

So a couple days later they put it back up.

Wouldn’t you know it, we had more high winds and it fell down again!  This time it also did damage to the funeral parlor room that Brenna, Alyssa and I had worked so hard on.  We really hoped the third time putting the tunnel back up would be the charm.   Thankfully it was! 

Lee and Peter came up with a new prop this year, the crush room.  The design and construction caused a lot of heart ache and took a ton of time, but they finally got it ready to install in the garage.  It took some heavy equipment to get it moved! :)

The crush room did just what it sounds like.  When people stepped into it the walls closed in on them.  Pretty scary!  Pretty much a big pain too.  It broke down on the first night, but they got it working again and it scared a lot of people.  Once the crush room was installed it was time to put the walls up and start the decorating.

I get pretty used to people tromping through my house and my living room being trashed. 

Not to mention the maze I had to walk through to get to my freezer or out to the food storage room.  I didn’t enjoy my car not being in the garage during the super rainy weather, but I got over it.  Emma was just a little freaked out when she had a visitor in her room.  Props were popping up in all sorts of crazy places!

Brenna and I made boards for people to take their pictures with while they were waiting in line.  They didn’t get used a ton (we even forgot to put them out one night!), but they were cute.

The first night we were open didn’t go so well.  There were lots of problems and things weren’t flowing all that great.  But we made some improvements, said a prayer which we had forgotten the first night, and the next two nights were great. 

The line was long all Halloween night, which is good and bad.  We lost a lot of people who didn’t want to stand in line. 

Brenna and I and the Abbott girls were in the funeral parlor.  Poor Brenna was mourning my passing. 

That’s right, I was in the coffin all night.  We made it pretty comfy though and it was quite fun to sit up and scare people half out of their wits!  Brenna must have been really sad about losing me because she was an amazing crier and freaked a lot of people out.

Lee worked the crowd as usual.  Emma and Kaitlyn helped him out.

It was the most fun to see people we know come through. 

It really was a successful haunt.  We got so many comments from people who were thankful for a free, family friendly activity.  It was scary, but not gory or evil in any way.  We had about 550 people go through this year.  Of course we couldn’t have done it without a lot of help.  We have some good friends.

There is talk of taking next year off.  I wouldn’t be opposed.  As fun and cool as the whole thing, it is a lot of work and it’s always good to be done!

Leap of Fright Prep

Around the middle of September preparations for Leap of Fright started ramping up.  The Sunderland’s and Jensen’s came over for a FHE/planning session.  Brenna gave us a lesson that involved a Lego video that all the kids paid rapt attention to and watched a couple times.

Then the work began.

The next week Lee started construction on a new prop. 

He was having a hard time getting one piece cut correctly so he asked John Wilbur if he could help him with it.  Being the nice man Bro. Wilbur is, and having the amazing wood shop that he has, he told Lee just to bring the whole thing over and they would get it built.

It turned out great and everybody had to take a turn trying it out.

Even Slim.  Ultimately it became my resting spot for the actual haunted house. 

The next week the signs and Johnny went up.  (Yes, every prop has a name.)  There was no turning back now.  A new year of Leap of Fright was about to begin!