I’d sort of been dreading Halloween. Caroline isn’t the biggest fan of costumes and when she doesn’t want to wear something she ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT WEAR IT. Evan changed his mind 15 times on what he wanted to be, so getting him into a costume we actually had in the house was doubtful. We failed at trick-or-treating at Sesame Place, they had no interest in dressing up for the Seaport or the Aquarium events, and the idea of drag-carry-pushing two kids up and down the hills in my neighborhood was giving me a migraine in advance. I’d been looking for excuses to get out of it pretty much all week, but they managed to behave JUST well enough that I couldn’t take away their Halloween after the Little Einsteins got them so jazzed up about it.

His shirt says “Will Trade Sister For Candy”

It turns out that sometimes lowering your expectations is the best thing you can do. Since all I was hoping for was one block of non-complaining children who said “thank you” after getting a piece of candy, I was blown away by my super polite, super friendly, willing to take turns, willing to walk on their own 2 feet, pleasant, costume-wearing children who made it three blocks before we came home and handed out candy instead, since leaving a bucket with a note that said “Please take 2 pieces!” led to an EMPTY BUCKET after only half an hour. Either we had 200 trick-or-treaters in 30 minutes or some people are douchebags who can’t follow directions.

Since I was pretty much expecting that to happen, I actually saved the good candy for Evan and Caroline to hand out. BOOM. That’s what you get for being jerkfaces, neighborhood kids. Enjoy your fireballs and generic lollipops. Too bad your parents never loved you enough to take you trick-or-treating themselves and teach you how to get whole handfuls of candy from old ladies who think you are absolutely the cutest thing they’ve ever seen.

You know, like my kids:

Caroline vetoed the tutu that was supposed to go under the skirt, but wore the wings all night – which is more than I was hoping for. I’m still ridiculously proud I made her costume.

We only had one person totally baffled by Evan’s costume. I said “It’s from ‘Where The Wild Things Are?'” She said “Oh, my kids are grown up, I don’t know about these shows kids are watching nowadays.”

E made it home in time to come with us, which made the kids super happy

A little flashlight thrown into one of those $1 pumpkin buckets makes a GREAT light for trick-or-treating.

We had a great time. We gave out $35 worth of candy from our house, even to the way-too-old kids who couldn’t be bothered to dress up. At one point, three teenage boys wearing hats and scarves stood on my steps and sang “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”, then asked if I had any candy canes or figgy pudding (they turned down my very sincere offer of a whole handful of candy since I got such a kick out of them). We let the kids eat several pieces of candy and enjoy their sugar buzz for an hour before Caroline went into a trance in front of Mickey Mouse and we made them go to bed.

I hope your Halloween was just as fun! Now please excuse me while I throw myself FULL FORCE into Caroline’s 2nd birthday party.

Tags: Caroline, E, evan, family, fun, Halloween, holidays, motherhood, pictures, tinker bell, trick-or-treat, where the wild things are