The Halloween Recap

I'm thinking the day after Halloween should be declared a national day of rest. There seems to be so much leading up to the day, then trick or treating, and that candy induced sugar rush to slowly come down from (and I don't mean just the kids!). Add to that the fact that it's now November and the start of The Holiday Season (dreaded words to many). We could all use a day to relax before we launch into the next two months' activity.

Our Halloween was a good one. Julia made it to school and back with her costume intact. Thanks to a smart mommy at her school party who insisted that all 25 kids put garbage bags on over their clothes before they start painting with black and purple paint. First year teachers don't lack enthusiasm but there are certain things they don't think through. We made more candy corn cookies for her class, and while the process was almost the end of me, they seemed to go over well. After Jack O' Lantern quesadillas, complete with barf and boogers, for dinner, we headed out for trick or treating. First we stopped to see some cousins visiting from the East coast. Lots of fun, that.

Because our neighborhood has its own surprisingly large population of spooks,weirdos, and freaks year-round (this is a whole other post), apparently Halloween isn't a big night here and trick-or-treating is, frankly, lame. We went instead to the neighborhood we want to move to and had a blast. There were tons of kids out, and Ethan and Julia were so much less timid than last year. The adults were really friendly, sweet Bunch fell asleep in the stroller and we had fun fantasizing about which house we'd like to move into. Even the older kids we saw were really cute and nice to our little ones. The only thing that would have made it better would've been to be strolling with a lovely Caramel Apple Cider from Starbucks. Lesson learned for next year.

This night confirmed that this is definitely the neighborhood for us and we're going to start looking in earnest. It will remain to be seen if we can actually buy a house here and still do things like turn on the lights and eat (and no, we're not talking a mansion or anything close) but we intend to find out.

There was a low point in the evening. A few houses handed out spooky labels with a message to vote against a certain issue in the upcoming local election. It was completely inappropriate and thoroughly pissed me off. There's no reason to get kids involved in political issues. Sick, sick move and I hope it backfires. Who's the idiot who thought this would be a good idea?

Happy Halloween everyone. Now put your feet up for the rest of the day because tomorrow you'll start stressing about You Know What.