Goblins and Ghouls

I love this time of year for many reasons. Mainly I love the crispness of the air, putting away my shorts and pulling out the jeans, the beautiful colors, and Halloween. I love Halloween. Let me clarify. I love the Halloween that is just the fun holiday (nothing to do with All Hallows Eve or with anything evil.) As a kid I have to admit that I had more fun passing out candy from my front porch than dressing up and trick or treating. Sometimes my dad would dress up too. I just enjoyed seeing everyone in their costumes.
We lived in a neighborhood with a ton of kids so we always had a lot of trick or treaters. On many occasions I remember my mom closing the door and turning off the porch light at around 8 because we had run out of candy. And let me tell you, my mom was not a skimper when it came to candy. She bought the good stuff and tons of it. So when I say we ran out of candy you know that we had a crazy amount of trick or treaters.
My mom bought milky ways, snickers, reeses, and three musketeers. If you came to my house, you were gonna get some chocolate. The one thing my mom bought every year were those gross gooey, can hardly chew them, stick to the roof of your mouth peanut butter chews- you know the ones- wrapped in either orange or black. Yuck! I would refuse to give those out so we always ended up with mass amounts of it left after Halloween. Thinking back, the smart thing to do would have been to give that yucky stuff out and horde the good chocolate!
Even after I moved out, I came back every Halloween to my mom's house to pass out candy. And after we had the boys, we took them to her neighborhood to trick or treat.
My boys LOVE Halloween and if I asked you why you thought that was, I'm sure most would think because of the candy. They do like the candy but what they love more is dressing up. Avery has been a duck, Barney, Woody from Toy Story, Shrek, The Thing, the red Power Ranger, The Human Torch and this year will be Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars. Aidan has been a pumpkin, Frankenstein, a glow in the dark skeleton, and will be Captain Rex, leader of the Clone Troopers from Clone Wars.
Once back home from trick or treating, the boys like to dump out their bags and sort their candy. They take great joy in this. :) We immediately pull out any candy they don't like and that goes with Jim to work the next day. They then get to keep their candy for a couple of days and whatever is left after that goes with Jim once again to work where he puts it on his secretary's desk to share. Jim said that its fairly busy around that candy bowl until the chocolate runs out. After that it takes days for the smarties, gum, and tootsie rolls (oh yeah and those orange and black wrapped yucky chews) to get gone.
So Happy Halloween in the dress up, trick or treat, Its the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown kind of way. :)