I yuv trick-or-treating

People ask me why I don't dress up. That's easy. Who has the energy to dress themselves up after they get their kids ready? Okay, some of you do. But I will pass, thanks. :)

Our little town offers quite a bit of Halloween festivities to pick and choose from. We could be scheduled all day with trunk-or-treats, Halloween carnivals, and costume parades if I wanted it that way. We've tried them all through the years, but there is one event we've never missed and that is our ward trunk-or-treat. It always happens the night before Halloween and it never disappoints. Carnival-type booths, a cake walk, a little spooky cave, homemade root beer and then outside for trunk-or-treating. It was cold and windy this year. Franny gladly wore her coat but Sophie refused to wear one. That surprised me because Sophie out of our two kids has always been the one more sensitive to temperatures. As a baby we took her out sledding and the moment a little snow touched the skin on her wrist between her glove and her coat, it was all over and we had to pack it in. And now when I'm putting her in her car seat and the sun is in her eyes, she starts screaming like her clothes are on fire. She grin and bore the cold through about half of the trunks we were treating at, and then when I asked her if she wanted her coat, she said, "yeah!" like it was the first time I had asked her. Then she looked up at me and said, "I yuv trick-or-treating." I said, "oh you do, do you?" and she said, "yeah, I yuv candy."

On the way home I said, "Okay, somebody give me their bucket so I can have some candy." (Hungry Mommy.) Sophie says, "okay" and she handed me a bag of pretzels. Uh..nice try. I said, "thanks dear, but can you hand me the bucket so I can pick up something." Usually at this point she would say, "Mom, I'm not a deer!" But this time she must have been too focused on the kung fu grip she was using to keep me from taking her precious bucket. Then Franny said, "here you go, Mom!" and handed me hers, at which point I enjoyed a very nice mini-Twix and mini-twizzler pull apart. I yuv trick-or-treating, too.

Then we came home and had a video chat with my Dad and two youngest sisters in California so they could see the girls in their costumes. Franny was super-chatty, showing them each and every individual candy. Meanwhile Sophie was on the floor next to us, not at all participating in the video chat and ravenously eating piece after piece of candy, probably anticipating the candy could be taken away from her at any moment. (Mean mommy.) When did she learn how to open her own wrappers? Some of my favorite parts of the video chat was when my Dad asked Franny for some of her candy and she laughed and laughed and said, "No, I can't give it to you in the computer!!!" At one point she was trying to get Annie's attention to show her a candy wrapper with a skeleton on it and Maggie put her face really close to their computer's camera and said, "Hi Franny, I'm here too." Franny said, "Oh, Maggie," with a little chuckle and sigh. Then as we were signing off, my Dad said, "hey franny" and gave her a little salute with his hand and said, "Wonder Woman salute!" She said, "No, no, this is Wonder Woman salute." And she put her hands on her hips and posed like this:


It was awesome. Then we washed the half a can of Aqua Net and glitter spray from their hair and cuddled up on the couch to watch Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I like scary movies on Halloween, and that's about the scariest I'm willing to show my kids. (We fast forward the dementor parts.) Sophie fell asleep within five minutes, like I knew she would. (She very recently gave up naps because she starts afternoon preschool on Monday!) Franny told us she gets an upset feeling in her stomach when she's scared, and then she said, "but I like scary." She takes after me. Then she asked us to skip to the part when Lupin turns into a werewolf, something she never should have seen in the first place, but Bobby dozed off and I was making dinner. I said no and luckily we were all asleep before that part came anyway. It was a great night.