They Get The Magic

Before I forget, new giveaway up at my review blog. And more to come in the next week or so!

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In Halloweens past, it's been more fun for me than for the wee ones. While they were interested in trick or treating, it quickly wore thin, and they were done. The costumes were fun, but they didn't really get into it.

This year? Oh, what a difference a year makes.

Granted, Little Miss decided at the last minute that she did not want to be Tinkerbell (as she'd been demanded for the previous ten months) but instead wanted to be a goblin. Uhhh, yeah. Momma don't make a goblin costume a) at the last minute b) after spending money on a Tinkerbell costume c) because she doesn't know what a goblin actually looks like or d) all of the above.

She went as Tinkerbell after I promised to put two layers of pants on her and threatened to take away the opportunity to go trick or treating. And she loved being Tink.

The first really cool part about this year is that a group I'm a part of put together a gluten free / casein free trick or treating event so that Little Miss was able to collect candy that she could actually eat. Mister Man was also invited along as a sibling, which meant that he saw his best friend from his first year of preschool and had a blast.





That's also where Little Miss started demanding two layers of pants under her costume. Bad mommy, I didn't think about how cold it would be Friday night. She had bare legs, although we were only out for a little bit as "just" fifteen or so houses were participating in the GFCF trick or treating.



The good news is that the wee ones followed the trick or treating rules I laid out for them. I did have to add a new one: after you ring the doorbell, count to fifteen slowly. If no one has answered the door by then, move on to the next house. The little buddy who saw Mister Man and immediately screamed for us to wait for him and joined us on our trek for the neighborhood benefitted from that rule the most, I think!

We actually did our entire neighborhood, and the wee ones wanted to keep going. Of course, as we went along our neighborhood, the coats, hats and mittens came out of my backpack. We stopped at home twice to dump candy and get a drink of water. But they had so much fun, we went to the neighborhood that connects to ours.

Smart me? I drove to it. And we lasted about ten houses into that neighborhood before they were done. And when they were done, they were D.O.N.E. Fortunately, I organized our trick or treating so that we weren't too far from our car at that point.

And getting home quickly meant that they still had plenty of time to hand out candy at our house, an honor they practically fought over. Our grand total was 339 this year, far less than the 462 we had last year. Our neighborhood is still a magnet for those who live elsewhere and have ahhhh greater acreage than we do. I took a quick snap of one car driving into our neighborhood to drop off kids at the very beginning. Within a half hour, streets were completely filled on both sides with cars parked, trucking in kids to trick or treat in my neighborhood.



Yes. That really is the kind of car we see driving around in our area.

And yes, I did the candy sorting. We had the Snickers pile, the corn syrup pile, and the you can choose from this pile. And wow is it hard to find candy that doesn't have corn syrup in it. Reese's and Mister Goodbar, along with two bags of pretzels were the only ones that made the cut. It's possible others might, but boo to Hershey's who refers me to the website for ingredients and nutritional information when looking at the package yet refers me to the package when I go online.

We're already asking when Halloween is next year.







So how was your Halloween?