Happy Haunts

Another Halloween, come and gone.

In all the years that we have lived in our house, we have never Trick or Treated in our neighborhood. There just haven't been enough kids in the 'hood to do it. There has been a bit of a resurgence of kids in the area in the last few years and, finally, this year we got to beg for candy in our own neighborhood.

As a kid, we always lived in areas that had lots of families, so Halloween was very much a pack activity. We'd all leave our houses just before dark and meet up with our friends just up the street. We would walk from house to house, my parents joking that they liked to peek into the neighbors windows and see how their houses were decorated. Now you know where I get that weird habit from. Yes, I' the adult craning over her kids heads to admire your living room couch.

The best part of Halloween is instituting rules like, "If you step off the sidewalk, I take a piece of your candy!" Just another holiday for me to be extra bossy during.  It may have won me no fans, but I did get plenty of extra candy from the deal.

We only lasted a few streets (love that about my kids) and collectively only got one pumpkin head worth of candy (which I usually go through and toss the gross stuff ie tootsie rolls, smarties, pixie stix). This year was
a good year for chocolate, though, there won't be much to purge.

My friend, Nancy at A Cookie Before Dinner made a handy little list of suggestions for what to do with all that Halloween candy. I might consider some of the ideas if I don't eat all my the kids' candy by the end of the weekend.