Halloween

A vampire and Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games

A be-jacketed pair: Peeta and Katniss from The Hunger Games. (Will's loaf of bread isn't pictured.)

We walked downtown for a bit before heading back to our neighborhood for trick-or-treating. Avonlea Jane liked seeing all of the costumes, but she also said she'd be glad to get her people back. She didn't like that when she saw lots of people downtown, she didn't know most of them. Fortunately, we did run into several people we know while walking about town.

We ran into Sydney at one of the fountains.

With Brenna as a comic book character

"Quick, bad guys are coming!"

Seeing Kate and Grace as lobsters

"I love lobster. If she wasn't Grace, I'd eat her."

Saying "Trick-or-Treat" to our little neighbor, Griffin

Someone wanted to get this trick-or-treating show on the road.

Saying "Happy Halloween" to Mark

"Ready to go! Treats! Candy!"

"May the odds be ever in your favor."

Both kids loved going door-to-door in our neighborhood. Will was yelling, "Run! Run! More candy. 'Nother house!" David met up with us part way through our trick-or-treating, and Will was overjoyed to show him how it was done. He loved going up with his sister and wanted to make sure he got, not only a piece of a candy for him, but "my dister, too." Occasionally he would also ask, "Mommy candy? Daddy candy? Michaela candy, too?" Our neighbors were happy to oblige. 

At the end of the night, their haul was so great that Avonlea Jane's pumpkin bucket was full, and Will fell over three times on the way home because his basket was too heavy. He refused to have his weight lifted, though. He didn't trust anyone near his basket. "Daddy up. Carry me. Me carry candy. Mine." At the end of the night, even with only being out for a short amount of time, we wound up with way more candy than our two little ones should or even could eat. We were thankful for the houses that mixed it up with pretzels, raisins, or little goodies in addition to or in place of candy. We handed out airplane glider kits. 

We've been letting them share some after dinner each night, but we've been well served by having a teenager in the house who also has teenage, candy-eating friends to clear a lot of it out of the house. After school-safe pretzels have been set aside for school snacks, and we even set some aside to put in their shoes on St. Nicholas Day and in their Christmas stockings, but we'll still have way too much candy in the house for quite some time.