Trick or Treat?

I'm not sure if the tiny snow flurries of the annual candy-gathering evening were the trick--or the treat! They certainly changed the atmosphere of Treat Night into something more festive and fun than a typical year. As we wandered the neighborhood with a troop of 15 children (whoa!), the little flakes certainly lit their imaginations and gave us parents something extra to talk about :)


Our kids went into full costume for the first time on Halloween night . . . Gabby was a "Saturday Person." This was her first purchased face mask, and I don't know if we used it correctly or not, but she did look green for a little while. Caelan did Gabby's hair in curlers, the robe used to be mine (another of my closet gifts to the girls :) and the teddy bear was her own. Caelan was a princess; wearing a modified version of Grandma J's dress, she added a skirt (which I think was Aunt J's?), and a sweater that used to be mine. Isn't mix and match fun? G Money appeared as a Spartan wearing the cardboard helmet, shin guards, and arm guards that he made and we spray painted, along with a beard his sister knit, a bit of *loin cloth* fabric from our Colorado treasure trove of a few years ago, and the coat Gabby wore (that Caelan made from an old shirt) for the circus this spring! Brennen found a pair of hand-me-down khakis, an old karate coat, and a dog blanket (thanks for the lend, Chauncey) and transformed into a Jedi! Total cost: $5.99 (for the face mask). Four cheers for creativity!!

Our usual neighborhood plan is to meet up with our homeschool buddies and take pictures. In recent years, all these pictures have been outside. Not so much this round! Brrr!

To make the evening even more fun, we invited our friends the K's who invited their friends and their two children. We had quite a houseful!
Baby D and her mama, Mrs. K, stayed at our house to hand out candy. This gave me the opportunity to walk around the neighborhood with my kids. (Usually this is Buck's job, but he let some of the guys with younger ones have the evening off to spend with their little trick-or-treaters). As we walked and saw the kids greeted by candy-bearing homeowners, I told my neighbor, "We've lived here all these years, and I've never seen most of these people!" In fact, the only one I recognized was the man who came to sell us the sunroom we decided against--he was a giant, inflatable, sumo baby. Later when he walked by with a beer in his hand another neighbor in our group jokingly accused him of "under age drinking." Halloween can get pretty weird.

Despite our early start, (we need to remember after 6, not before for next year--since they don't give us parameters around here) we ended up back at the house as dusk settled. Our candle-lit pumpkins looked so festive and cozy in the snow shower. It was a big whirl of fun and noise, and then everyone wanted to go home and be warm in their own space :)

My boys, after sorting their candy, helped me with the gigantic task of sorting and filing a month's worth of school work. They ran the hole puncher and put my subject piles into the right section of each of eight binders! Today, I graded, figured, recorded, and finally printed the first quarter grades for the girls. This teaching stuff was easier before all the paperwork ;)