When Elsa, a Bee, and Mickey Took on the Neighborhood

Ever since I can remember, I've been torn at Halloween. Do I want to go get candy? Or do I want to pass it out? Because they are both SO FUN!! Then, I outgrew trick-or-treating and could just focus on handing out the candy. I love Halloween night, seeing all the kids dressed up, and handing them sugar by the handful. Except I'm pretty sure I lost my job. The small Vs discovered the joy of handing out candy this year.

They stood on our tiny landing for probably 45 minutes, holding fistfuls of candy, basically willing people to our door. No one could ring our doorbell because they had the door open as soon as someone even looked toward it. After they each put candy in every bag (the neighborhood kids scored at our house), they stood in the doorway waving and shouting "Happy Halloween!" It was the very best - everything I dreamed about in having kids that love holidays as much as I do! At one point, they were so sad that there was a lull in traffic that Mike snuck out the backdoor, put on some hockey gear and grabbed a bucket, and came around the front. We got a couple legit KitKats out of the deal, so it worked for us (as opposed to the other KitKats that I swiped from their buckets ...)

The girls didn't have school on Halloween so I took the day off and we had a girls day. We made hot chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow icing and delivered them to some neighbors. We picked up Dec early so we had time to make "Bats and Cobwebs" for supper (bowtie pasta as "bats," spaghetti sauce, and melted mozzarella pearls that string up as "webs") and get ready for our trick-or-treating date!

We met up with our neighbors Evelyn and Jonah and their parents. [Fiona goes over to their house every day and catches the bus in the morning with Evelyn.] Last year, we had so much fun trick or treating with cousins that we wanted to go in a group again. I conceded to the will of Fiona this year and she was Elsa. But I refused to buy anything new and told her she had to put together an outfit based on the many Elsa pieces in the dress up bin. Quinn decided to revive the bee costume for another year. And Dec found F's old Mickey Mouse costume in the closet and decided that was perfect. So somehow I got off with all existing costumes!

We started with the cul-de-sac and the big kids were pros. Dec was working hard to keep up and was loving being a part of the group. Q was done after the cul-de-sac, so she and Mike headed home to hand out candy. Bugs, D, and I continued down the block with the gang. By the end of the block, they were done too. So we headed back home, popped a Halloween music station on Spotify, and the aforementioned happy candy handing happened.

It was simply a splendid holiday!