Friday, November 2, 2012

Halloween Fail...

For the second year in a row we have had Halloween fail. Gone are the days of walking your neighborhood for treats. Now it seems as if the Halloween "events" has taken center stage. Neighborhoods look like a New York City caliber traffic jam because apparently, children have lost the ability to walk door to door and must be driven in mini-vans with open sliding doors from house to house.
Scooby and the Gang!
Shaggy and Scoob
Let me begin, we started off this year with a bang. The week before Halloween we had trunk or treat at our church. It was a great event. We invited the school and surrounding neighborhood. We had candy. We had spray on tattoos. We had bouncy rides. We had coordinating costumes.
Cutest Giraffe EVER!
Then came Noah's Ark day at C's school where he proceeded to inform me he would like to go as a giraffe. Okayyyy....no problem, it's time for creative mommy to make an appearance. You see, she's been hiding under piles of laundry for approximately 2 years. So I busted out the rusty, trusty glue gun and Voila! Giraffe. No problem baby. 

Youth Party
Now, please keep in mind at this point we have been to TWO pumpkin patch/farm/hayride kinda places. We have picked pumpkins, apples, and corn. We have petted and fed various sheep/goats/pigs/horses. We have gotten lost in not one but TWO corn mazes.
Not to mention a fall festival at school. And a date with mama to see Hotel Transylvania. We carved pumpkins. We made Oreo pumpkin pops. We grew skeletons in water (grows up to 600x their size!!!) For good measure we attended the youth Halloween party on Sunday, in costume I might add. 

Now it's October 31st. I tell you all of that to say this. You would think after all this hoopla we could simply "skip" Halloween trick or treating. We went to church, in yet another costume. Sorry no pictures because at this point I am Halloweened out. I was planning on glazing over the fact that we were just going home after church, but noooooo....apparently some little booger at my kids school told him about going door to door for candy. He insisted. I tried to be a good sport. Last year, we just went to friends homes. This year, all of our friends were at church. So we tried a mega church down our street hosting a "Truck or Treat". The line was wrapped around their mega building twice. I told C I would take him to the store and buy him whatever candy he wanted if we could leave. Being the savvy businessman he is, that was an easy bribe.

As we drove through our neighborhood, I noticed quite a few porch lights on. I thought "Ah ha! Halloween can be saved! We'll go at it the ol' fashioned way!" First door (WITH LIGHT ON!) No answer. Second door (WITH LIGHT ON!) no answer. Third door....you get the picture. If C was a few years older, I would have encouraged him to go get the TP and eggs. Ok, that was a joke. But I'm not gonna lie- the thought crossed my mind more than once as I carried J up the hill and watched C's disappointed face three doors in. I told him I would buy him TWO candies of his choice if we could just go home and watch "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown". So we that's what we did. We handed out candy to THREE kids. Next year, I think I'm going with "Didn't you hear honey? Halloween has been canceled!"



2 comments:

  1. This is awesome. I happen to know what mega church you mean :) I was told if you don't get there by 5 to get in line you wait two hours just to get in!! But it doesn't start until 6 so that means you actually wait in line an hour in order not to wait in line for two hours. Say whaaaaa?!?!? We skipped as well. Crazy! Also, we live in a neighborhood where the open door mini vans cruise.

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  2. This makes me SO thankful that we live on base in military housing. Where the Dad's take their kids (when they're not deployed) door to door, while the Mom's sit on the front porch handing out candy and meeting all the neighbors and their kids. They also limit the hours so it goes from 5pm - 9pm at the latest. Means little kiddos are in bed before it's to late. And Military Police Officers patrol the neighborhoods handing out light sticks as "treats" and to keep everyone safe and well lit. Forget the candy, those light sticks were the favorite "treat" of the night. My little ones dumped the candy as soon as they came in the door and had more fun handing OUT candy than getting it and completely forgot about the candy by bedtime while insisting that they're military lights sticks be hung up in their room in place of their favorite night light. If you have a military base close by I'd check it out and see if they open it up to the public for trick or treating.

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