The Halloween before Halloween

Our ward Halloween activity including trunk-or-treat was tonight. We all started the day sleeping in as long as possible, especially since Man took a whole headache pill pretty late last night and was shaking it off even after 11am. He says that they seem to be helping but he's still working on getting full nights' rests.

Anyway, the little neighbor kids were all a-twitter with their grandparents in town for little G's birthday. By the time we got everyone fed and ready to go to the b-day party, bought G's b-day gift and wrapped it, and trooped on over, it was 1pm. We stuck around playing, visiting, and Man was helping set up their new Wii while I made Tag's Halloween costume. Pebbles didn't fall asleep until about 4pm which made her desperately tired for about half of the ward activity which started at 5.

At the activity, Tag had a hard time getting into the spirit of things, refusing to do much of anything except that silly fishing game you always see at ward Halloween parties. The haunted maze scared him enough to make him scream, and he didn't get any candy from the pinata (but you know, there were about 3 dozen kids around that thing) so he was severely bummed out until the actual trunk or treating started. After that he was a-rarin' to go, telling people all about his costume and being his engaging, sociable self. Princess had a blast the whole time and did all of the games without any sort of prompting at all. It was so very odd to see them temporarily trade personalities. Pebbles mostly clung to one parental unit or the other.

We left early after one round of cars which was enough to net them a whole evening's worth of Halloween plunder (including such oddities as key chains and small tubs of play dough). On the drive home we realized that no one had lunch or dinner today and the kids were happily munching on candy. Oops. We swung by a few different places to try to pick up food but found our attempts all closed for the evening at just before 7pm. Home again to whip out some burgers, wipe all the kids down, get teeth thoroughly brushed, and tuck the little darlings into bed. Poor Tag was so very whipped out that he fell asleep within mere minutes of hitting the pillow, also very uncharacteristic.

Oh, btw, no pics yet. I'll get those on H night after everyone gets into their real costumes. Princess is a flower fairy, Tag is a gumball machine, and Pebbles is a dinosaur.

One of the people handing out candy tonight had two options: a "witch's brew" selection of normal, safe treats, and the haunted basket of horrors with a dare to even peek at the macabre collection inside. The basket contained such oddities from her cupboard as canned mushrooms, shelf stable soymilk, and canned black eyed peas. I might try that next year, using cans from the local ethnic groceries and their odd fruit or mushroom selections.

And now to sleep, perchance to dream.