Trunk-or-Treat

Does anyone else hate trunk-or-treating? For those that might not know what that is, trunk-or-treating is when a neighborhood or church group gets together and everyone parks their cars in a parking lot or central location and people are dishing out candy to the kids from their trunks. I assume it was originally intended to be a safe alternative to trick-or-treating with the assumption that you knew and trusted everyone involved in the trunk-or-treating. Of course like a lot of other holiday traditions it has been corrupted. Halloween is a fun holiday I think. I mean you get to go out all dressed up as whatever you want to be and people give you free candy. It's a great idea. I do get sick of finding half sucked suckers stuck to the sofa and the carpet and the back of Lila's hair. And I get sick of the kids asking me if they can have some more candy (because I take their bags and only let them have some when I feel like it). But overall, it is fun. But then, someone has the crazy idea that they should organize a trunk-or-treat. Well fine, its quicker, you get just as much candy, and it could possibly be safer. Oh, but wait. There's a catch. It turns out that this person with the idea to do some trunk-or-treating isn't the only one to have the idea. So they want to meet at the church parking lot, but someone else has already reserved the church parking lot for halloween night. So this person thinks, well that's ok, (and here is were they lose my support) we'll just do it on a different night. What? Halloween on October 25th? That is what happened to me. They wanted me to get my kids in costume and buy halloween candy a week before halloween. Now I know some people have their kids costumes all ready weeks in advance and have the candy bought in plenty of time. But not us. We usually go out and buy the candy halloween day and put the finishing touches on the costumes a few minutes before we go out the door on halloween. So to ask me to have all of that done a week early is asking a lot. And to ask me to repeat it all again the next week is really pushing it. I like candy. And my kids like candy. But we really don't need to have two halloweens a year. And you know that just because we did trunk-or-treating early they will still want to go trick or treating on halloween. So when we heard about the trunk-or-treating taking place a week before halloween Molly and I decided to boycott it.

BUT the day of the trunk-or-treating came and Molly was out of town and all the kids in the neighborhood were getting their costumes on and taunting my kids because I told them they weren't going and I just caved in and said, "Fine we can go." Plus they were having free dinner at the church before the trunk-or-treating and I didn't feel like cooking. But then of course I had to scramble for some costumes.

Zoe wanted to be a veterinarian and Molly had bought some fabric with some animals on it and was going to make her a scrub shirt. But of course she had not yet because we still had like a week left until halloween. Lila was going to be a ghost because Zoe was a ghost a few years ago and we already had the sheet with the hole cut out for the head. But when Lila brought it to me it was ripped. Leisel was going to be a princess or a ballerina which is easy because they have a huge dress-up bucket with a couple dozen princess or ballerina costumes. And we had bought Luke a sword and shield and helmet to be a roman warrior when we went to Vegas last March, but we didn't know what we were going to have him wear with it yet. So I had to find something for Zoe, Lila, and Luke. Well, I decided that I could handle making some scrubs for Zoe. They seemed pretty simple and I had an example of some (in Molly's size anyway). So I got one of Zoe's shirt to get the size in the right range and got Molly's scrubs to see what they looked like and started cutting out some fabric. It turns out that I was right. They weren't so complicated. Well actually I only made a shirt. It did take about three hours from start to finish though. But it looked ok to me. Good enough for a halloween costume anyway. Zoe took a picture of me sewing.
Then I found a box with more old halloween costumes in it and found a witch costume that would fit Lila and a turtle costume that would fit Luke. So we were all ready to go. Oh except Leisel, who had been wearing the ballerina outfit that she wanted to wear, peed in her costume. So I had to hand wash that and put it in for a speed dry. But then we were all ready. Oh, except I didn't have any candy. So we all went to the store and I bought three bags of candy hoping that would be enough. It wasn't. But I didn't feel too bad. I know the little buggers who missed out at the trunk-or-treat would be at my house in another few days anyway on the real halloween. Well the kids had a good time and got loads of candy. I didn't get a picture of them before we left so all I have is this picture of them looking all tired and scraggly looking afterwords. Oh well.