Trick or Treat

Carving our pumpkins on Saturday afternoon...

Clearly it is better to carve pumpkins in underwear. I'm sure that is how Superman would do it! Everyone enjoyed cleaning out the pumpkin guts. The only complaint was about how cold it was inside the pumpkins!

The kids did quite a bit of the cleaning. They did absolutely all of the designing. And for the first time the girls did the bulk of their own carving.
















Thanks to our St. Louis friends, we had a Superman for Halloween. The boy was all over the place on costume ideas this year. We settled on Superman purely for our adult enjoyment. Spencer thought it was hysterical that Superman wore his underwear on top of his clothes.

Next up is Abby, our Witch. It was downright easy to accommodate this request since she found the bulk of her items in our dress up collection. A trip to Nobbies to spruce it up and we were set.

Then there's Ellie who decided that she wanted to "be freaky and creep people out" this year. Who is this child and where did she come from? At any rate, we obliged and found this skeleton costume off of craigslist. She fell in love and the creepin' people out efforts began immediately.

The weather was BEAUTIFUL Saturday night. We couldn't have asked for better temps. The kids didn't need coats over their costumes. I grabbed a coat but that was too warm. The kids are really into the whole trick or treating gig and we walked a large portion of our neighborhood. Two hours later we were returning home with tuckered out kids.

Following our family tradition, they dumped their loot out into their own individual piles. They got to sort through it, admire it, enjoy some of it, and ultimately decide which pieces would go into their small keep bag... and yes, the bag had to close. Once their bag was full... and sealed... they were done.

The rest typically goes to the Candy Fairy. But this year they had an opportunity to share the Candy Fairy candy with a program we are doing at school. I've created a Healthy Lifestyle program for the entire month of November and the first challenge to our students was to get rid of their candy and junk food. So our kids made their selections to keep, made up a bowl for the Candy Fairy, and then prepared two full gallon sized bags to take to school on Monday morning. Ellie wrote a lengthy and very detailed note to the Candy Fairy to ensure that she would understand what all they were doing.

The Candy Fairy made her visit late Saturday night. She happily took their large bowl of candy and left each one a small token of thanks. Everyone was happy!

We could have easily let them keep it all. We know that they won't eat the bulk of it. It would just go into our cupboard (or cuvord if you are Spencer) and for the most part it would be forgotten about in a matter of days. We are now 6 days post Halloween and even their small bags of selected candy have pretty much been forgotten about. But we like that they are faced with this decision. Through this process they realize that they don't actually need it all and that much candy just isn't good for their bodies.

I think our school program has been a success thus far. We just wrapped up the first week and first challenge. I was amazed at how difficult it was for students and adults alike to part with their candy. Nearly 50% of the students participated and we collected 84 pounds of candy that will all go to Operation Gratitude.