Does anyone else remember when a Halloween costume required approximately five minutes of preparation and whatever you could find around the house?

Want to be a ghost? Find an old white sheet and cut two holes in it for your eyes.

Done.

Or maybe you pulled out some old clothes, added a few patches, tied your pants up with a piece of rope, grabbed a stick with a handkerchief tied to the end, and went as what we called a “hobo” back then.

Also done.

There were no coordinating family costumes. No elaborate makeup tutorials. No packages arriving on the front porch containing “the one specific accessory” absolutely necessary to complete your look.

We just rummaged through closets.

And somehow, we thought we looked GREAT.

I still remember one of my junior high girlfriends showing up dressed as an old lady. Her costume consisted (in part) of two rolls of toilet paper tucked into the front of her shirt and a roll of paper towels stuffed into the back of her pants.

We thought it was HYSTERICAL.

And honestly, it still makes me laugh.

The best part? That same girlfriend and I now share grandbabies. Who could have imagined back then, while we were laughing ourselves silly over her homemade “old lady” costume, where life would take us?

What a delight.

Halloween has changed a bit since then.

My kids and their families now do themed costumes, and I have to admit, they are stinking adorable.

We’ve had Peter Pan, Wendy and Captain Hook. The entire Incredibles family. Snow White and her dwarfs. And the list goes on.

These are not costumes thrown together 20 minutes before trick-or-treating. There is a PLAN.

Everybody has a character. Everybody coordinates. And somehow even the smallest child gets incorporated into the theme, whether they understand what is happening or not.

I look at the pictures and absolutely love it.

But I also have to laugh when I think about how different it is from Halloween when I was a kid.

Nobody was asking, “What’s our family theme this year?”

Our family theme was pretty much, “What do we already own?”

Maybe that is part of what makes watching the next generation so much fun. Traditions change. Our kids take some of the things we loved, add their own spin, and then pass the fun along to their children.

I still have a soft spot for those simple Halloweens when a sheet could turn you into a ghost and a pillowcase made a perfectly acceptable trick-or-treat bag.

But I wouldn’t trade seeing my kids and grandkids dressed up together for anything.

So whether your Halloween involves a perfectly coordinated family theme or two eye holes cut in an old sheet, I hope your night is filled with laughter, good memories, and way more treats than tricks.