My youngest son has a lot of food allergies, so when he was younger, that limited a lot of the candy, food and things, he could have. I say candy in particular because when he first started going trick-or-treating, I felt so bad because we were getting all this candy and I thought, ‘he can't have ANY of this'. That first year or two trick-or-treating with him I felt horrible, but thankfully he was too young to really remember. But I just kept thinking: 'he's going to get older eventually, and he's going to be upset because they're giving out all this candy and he already knows he can't have any of it'. So I started a tradition at that time with my family that, instead of actually going out trick-or-treating, we all get together on Halloween and have a big party.

We all get dressed up in different costumes, but we keep it a secret what our costumes are; we don't tell my parents, they don't tell us. So when they come for the party, we're seeing the costumes for the first time. And I make special food. One year I made a Bigfoot Meatloaf (I shaped it like a foot), I've done Jack-O-Lantern quesadillas, I've done Scary Bell Peppers. It's always some kind of Halloween-themed dinner I make. I decorate the house real good, we play scary music and watch movies, and we've got fog machines. We've got spiders and those Harry Potter floating candles.

We have games in the yard and we build it all around the candy and food that I know my son can have. I wanted to do all I can to know he has a good Halloween experience and he doesn't have that letdown of like, 'oh, well, I got all the stuff I can't have' and get upset about it… no, everything on this platter is 'Sean-friendly'. It came from me just trying to be a good dad and it turned out, ‘well, this is really fun!’