Halloween is both frustrating and fun, on the one hand you have two screaming overly excited kids who want to break down the doors of the neighbors and grab the bowl of candy and run off into the night cackling and on the other you have lots of spooky doorways which evilly beckon the kids to test their steel and see if they aren't complete chicken shits. Mine are. It makes for many a side splitting moment, helped along by the fact that I have never seen kids who are less interested in candy then my own. Granted they love the intense sugar high they get from over-indulging in sweets but the real problem for them lies in the fact that they know they wont be able to do so. I suppose most would say I'm a strict mom. I didn't let them have more then one piece on Halloween night but I don't want my kids to scarf down like the gluttonous little monsters they could be. I ration their candy out and as it goes, it's considered a treat rather then a food and only given out when their actions are appropriate for a reward. Needless to say this means that even though they are going around getting free candy they wish to be choosey about the candy they receive, I had to correct them more then once to just be grateful to the giver of their tiny plastic wrapped happiness instead of asking for a different one instead. At one house they were given the choice between an apple or a piece of candy, both my children, even to my surprise, picked the apple instead, the woman was so impressed she gave them candy anyways. They walked around munching on their treat, far more delighted in it then most of the candy already greedily received. They got about two pounds each.
We didn't even make it all the way around the housing development, we had been out for a hour and by then the kids didn't care to finish. They were tired and their bags were heavy and they didn't really care if they got candy anymore or not. The last couple houses they literally just bypassed trying to get home faster. All the other kids were running around, happy as hell, to be out getting candy and mine were complaining about how tiring it all was.
I'm sure that the houses that scared them also made them want to stop. We hit three in particular that really spooked them and gave me some great laughs. The first one didn't much scare them as the other two, it was earlier in the evening and they were still mildly excited about going around. A neighbor down the way had turned part of their garage into a mini haunted house where you had to travel through it to get to the candy. That was pretty awesome, I wish my parents were into Halloween, that sounds like a fun idea to try. The kids clung to my skirt, I was dressed as a pirate, as we walked through but once out they both thought it was awesome. Not too scary at all. The second house happened on the next block, there was a fake skull knocker on the door and when Bubbaloo rang the doorbell the motion sensor in it went off from him standing back. The eyes lit up red and the mouth clacked open and close as it cackled. This startled them and they freaked out so much that they jumped from the porch and ran down the sidewalk to the end of the block. I have to say, it is very hard to chase someone when you are laughing so hard. The third house was the last house they truly wished to visit, though I convinced them to go to at least two more on the way around the other side of the block to our house. The neighbor had decorated the whole front yard and driveway with Halloween paraphernalia with the bowl for the candy stuck right in the middle of it. To get to the candy you had to walk through it all, there were skeletons and gravestones, lots of fake cobweb stuff, this huge looking ghost with a Freddy mask but the best part of it was that the neighbors were just sitting around amongst this stuff, in costume, looking like they were just part of it all, like two mannequins dressed up to the nines. I had seen them earlier jump out at some teens and heard them scream but they could clearly see that Bubbaloo and Baby Grr were already pretty freaked just by the stuff around them that they tried very hard to stand completely still. The kids made me walk with them to the bowl and they didn't want to stick their hand into it for fear of a motion sensor that would make something grab them, they got a good scare from one like that a couple years back and still haven't gotten over it, so I stuck my hand in and told them it was okay. Baby Grr reached in but Bubbaloo wouldn't and in the end she pulled a candy out for him. At the last moment as we were making our way back to the side walk one of the neighbors moved and Bubbaloo saw it. He pulled on Baby Grr and the guy, who had been adjusting his stance at that very moment, scared both of them. Bubbaloo dropped his bag, grabbed Baby Grr's hand and they ran down yet another block but this time Bubbaloo was screaming at the top of his lungs that he hated Halloween and didn't want to do it next year. I picked up his bag, thanked the neighbors and ran after my kids laughing hysterically. I'm sure I'm going to hell for finding their fear funny but I couldn't help it, it really was too funny.
When we got home I gave them something to eat and then a bath, I had sprayed pink in Baby Grr's hair and it needed to come out before she got pink all over her bedsheets. Earlier in the day SES was very worried that her hair would go up in flames because apparently someone he knew had had that happen that weekend. I reminded him she wouldn't be going anywhere near any flames and I used it anyways. It's funny the things he brings up. However they wanted me to call and tell him how much they had missed him being there, so I did, but only so they would stop pestering me about it, plus she wanted me to let him know her hair didn't go up in flames, though I didn't remember to say that part though. They went to bed after their bath and were out cold in just a couple minutes. I wasn't so lucky, I had to clean the pink ring from the bathtub.
On a completely different note I think I will once again be doing NaNoWriMo. I did it last year and made the 50k. Yeah.
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