Questionable Halloween Candy

Like any kid who went out on Monday night Trick or Treating, my two came home with a haul of goodies fit for a King.

I'm sure you're like me - the bags get dumped out on the floor and I literally sort through each and every one to ensure they're safe. I don't question my neighbourhood, necessarily. Each and every house we go to is totally fine and most have kids who either go to our elementary school or the one up the road.

The problem I have is with what goes through some folks minds when "preparing" their Halloween treats. The word preparing is a problem here. What's there to prepare? You open a box of Mars Bars, dump them into a bowl and put them at your front door.

But every year there's that one person who decides to go-that-extra-mile-for-the-kids and puts loose candies into individual bags that are decked out with all manner of spookiness, tied up with ribbons and bows (and repeat this process 100 times).

Why??

Loose candies?? (shaking my head) and off to the trash they go. What a waste.

Loose jelly beans, loose jube jubes, loose Skittles??

Why??

First of all your dirty, nasty hands have touched those loose candies and I don't know where they've been!

Second, and this is going back to my days of Trick or Treating 30 years ago, any fool knows about candy safety unless they are deliberately wanting to harm a child (I curse you whoever you are).

So why would you even bother to do this. Is it to save money? Really?

I get the whole "it's the thought that counts" thing, but in this case, there is no thought. It's just sheer stupidity.

Okay so now what do I do?

Okay, so here's the thing. On the days leading up to Halloween, I was able to get my boys out of bed and up and ready for school by yelling out, in an excited voice:

"(fill in random # here) more days 'til Halloween..."

This pretty much got them out of bed and dressed no problemo. Because what were they?? Excited, that's what!

So now what the heck to I do?

Somehow "2 months 'till Christmas..." just doesn't seem to have the same appeal.

"61 days 'till Christmas..." Nah, even Jinglebelled out it still doesn't work. It seems like an eternity away. That wouldn't get me out of bed in record time either.

So it's back to grumpy pants Mom who yells them out of bed, yells them dressed, and yells them to get teeth brushed, etc.

I could threaten to highjack their "ween loot. But then they might hide every left shoe in each pair that I own which would indeed mess with my sanity.

Yup, I'm buggered until at least Dec 1st!

Our Halloween House

How do you know it's Halloween?

Houses are dress up in creepy, crawly, ghoulishness.

And if your house is like mine, your kids have put up anything that resembles the Halloween image, in any location they can reach, in a hodge podge manner, just because.

I've seen these "just because" decorations in a few houses. Odds and ends, bits and pieces, placed here and there with no thought to "decoration flow". I personally don't really care about this hodge podge mess of chaos. The kids are so excited about going out on Halloween night, so setting up their "decorations" makes them feel excited about this yearly event.

We've got spider webs blowing in the breeze, taped to the windows to stay put. Paper masks taped to the windows peeking out for anybody to see (given to the boys by a restaurant we were at last week as a kids take away toy), and about a weeks work of papers and flyers stuffed into plastic ghosts and pumpkins splattered all over the place.

These guys constantly rotate to face the house and stay that way, never looking out unless you manually turn them...only to turn back again. We got these at Ross in the States.

Off to the left of the picture is a bit of spider web that blows in the breeze. Every time it billows and I happen to be near the window, I catch a glimpse of this billowing string out of the corner of my eye, and I think there's someone outside my window.

This is what lights up the boys faces each morning.