Halloween

Joel took the kids out trick or treating for about an hour last night, which was plenty long enough for them to get completely sugared up, especially Rebecca, who put on a pair of plastic vampire teeth and was completely out of control for a while running around and giggling like a maniac. Caroline went for a half-hour stroller walk with Joel in her unicorn costume before coming home and going to bed; no doubt she was wondering what the late night (for her) walk was for, and who were all these people wandering around...?

I stayed at home and sat on the porch giving out candy, because the trick-or-treaters were coming so fast and furious that sitting inside would have been a royal pain, with the door bell constantly ringing, etc. At one point there was a stampede on the porch steps, two kids fell down in the crush of bodies, one kid almost knocked our pumpkin over... We ran through 5 bags of candy including 2 bags that were the jumbo size, and then I had the kids dump their loot and hand me everything they didn't like, which for Becca meant all her snickers, peanut M&Ms, and reeses cups, and for Ben meant pretty much just tootsie rolls. That got us through the rest of the evening (porch light off at 9), and I was able to return some of the candy back to the kids ;)