Merry Christmas

I was at the store yesterday morning (October 31st – Halloween) and they had already moved all of the Halloween stuff out to expand their Christmas display. Today I stopped by my new favorite craft store and found that all fall stuff was 40-70% off (yay sales!) but there was only about one aisle of stuff available. And forty million aisles of Christmas decorations. While this is still better than the stores that were making room for the holiday displays in July, I’m just not ready to see red and green everywhere yet. And I guess I needed to pick out a Thanksgiving centerpiece and door dec in August when they were still in stock. *sigh*

In other, more Fall appropriate news, the girls had a nice Halloween yesterday. The extra hour of daylight seemed to throw off our trick or treaters, though. Last year we had people knocking down our door before we were halfway through dinner. To avoid this, we ate at the ridiculously early our of 4:45pm. We got the kids dressed around 5:30pm. No one’s out. Still daylight. We played outside and took some photos until 6pm. Still no one out. Still light out. Finally, around 6:15pm there was some activity on the street. (I hate being first at a party so it’s no surprise I didn’t want to be the first to knock on some one’s door.) Plus, in my neighborhood we all sit out on our front steps to give out the candy.

We ended up visiting about 4 of our neighbors before the girls had their limit. They kept wanting to go to the same house multiple times, walk in different directions, or chew on the still wrapped candy. Plus, they’re still getting over a cold so they’ve been really cranky. The nice thing this year is that they were able to walk to the houses. (Last year, carrying two babies in puffy pumpkin costumes to the end of the block to visit a neighbor was a royal pain and major workout.)

I enjoyed seeing all the kids in their different costumes. Although, I have to say, there was only two truly creative costumes the entire evening. One was a 2.5 year old in a suit with gel in his hair who told me “You’re Fired!” and the other was a 10 year old with his head through a table. The rest were a sea of pirates, princesses, and scream masks. I’m not ashamed to say that there was a merit scale at this house and if I liked your costume a lot you got extra candy. (No, I didn’t withhold if you showed up without one or you were the 10th ____ of the night.) The little boy that told me I was fired (complete with finger point) could have taken the whole bowl if he wanted. Overall, we had about 100 kids before I shut off the light.

The other interesting part of the evening: One of our first stops was at the home of the people who had organized the block party this summer. The girls were offered candy bars and we were offered alcohol. The cooler was full and all adults on the lawn were drinking. Later, the 4 year old daughter stopped at our house carrying a cute little princess bucket and the mom was carrying around a nice cold bottle of beer.