There were a couple of moments when it was in doubt. Friday afternoon, Penny went to the nurse complaining that she felt tired, and the nurse found she was running a low-grade fever. How pissed will Penny be, I wondered, if she gets sick and can't go trick-or-treating? But the fever was gone by Friday night, and she was fine all day Saturday.
When Alex went down for his nap after lunch on Saturday, we carved our pumpkins. Penny even got to help scoop hers out and design the face for it. (Maybe next year I'll buy one of those kits with the kid-safe knife and we'll let her attempt the carving part, too.) She had fun, anyway, and I think the pumpkins turned out really well.
But as we were finishing up, it had started to rain. Matt and I waffled, then decided it was warm enough to let the kids go trick-or-treating in the rain, but it was going to take a lot of the fun out of it.
But at 5:30, as the neighborhood kids started to assemble in the cul-de-sac in their costumes, champing at the bit with anticipation and impatience for the official 6:00 start time, the rain had stopped and the sun even occasionally broke through the sculling clouds. The grass was wet, but it didn't dampen any enthusiasm.
Alex had been refusing to wear his costume for more than a few minutes at a time before, but once outside, he seemed to forget he was wearing it. He charged back and forth through the grass, and when 6:00 finally arrived, he willingly took Matt's hand and gamely went next door to pick some candy from the neighbor's bucket. He never did say (or try to say) "Trick or treat," but Matt said he did say "Bye-bye!" a few times, and even one "Thank you!" I thought all the strange people in strange costumes would spook him, but he went to all the houses on our cul-de-sac, and might have gone further, but was distracted by one neighbor's gravel-lined driveway. When you're not-quite-two, rocks are cooler than candy, I guess.
Penny did her trick-or-treating with Ray, whose mom graciously agreed to keep an eye on both kids so that Penny wouldn't have to be held to Alex's pace with Matt. They didn't have the stamina to be gone the whole two hours, but they brought back respectable hauls (seriously - Penny only had two "junk" candies, and those were well offset by the full size candy bar in her bucket!), then spent the rest of the evening helping to hand out candy and playing outside with their glow-in-the-dark safety bracelets and necklaces.
We didn't have nearly as many trick-or-treaters as usual this year, and at least half of our candy went un-treated. My theory is that with the threat of rain, a lot of parents decided to take their kids to the mall to trick-or-treat instead of letting them wander outside.
At any rate, I ate more leftover candy than I should, so this morning I packed it all up and sent it to work with Matt. Whether he leaves it in the staff room for general consumption or keeps it in his desk for his own private use is entirely up to him!
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