I Paid $40 For That Candy, Mitts Off!!!

Aaaahhh, another Halloween past. More candy wrappers to clean up, more goodies to confiscate (i.e. "For every candy wrapper I find on the floor, I get a piece of candy out of your candy bucket, and I get to pick which one!") Sue and Katy get the "sweet deal" award for the duck costumes from last weekend, but I was after something specific. Connor has definitely hit the terrible twos (can you say Drama King?), so we (me & Dani) voted that he be Connorzilla for Halloween, hence the dragon costume. Not a lot of selection in town, so I shopped online (a dangerous activity I seem to be doing more & more) for one. With shipping/handling, I paid $40 for Connor's costume this year. So, after taking Pookie trick-or-treating tonight, I told the older kids, "I paid $40 for this candy, so it's mine. Mitts off!" Ummmm... yes, I did steal candy from a baby. I really don't think he's going to miss it. But, I have to say, I'll probably just swipe the good chocolate and give the rest back to him, a few pieces at a time. As we passed candy out at the trunk-or-treat in our church parking lot, I said to all the parents of little babies, "Now, baby, you share your candy with Mommy & Daddy!" Wink, wink. You can totally work the candy thing the first few years. Then, they keep an eagle eye on it, and it's harder to take the good stuff without incident. Dani was Medieval Chick (it was Dead Medieval Princess, but the wig was mangled, so she went for pretty instead), Zen and Gil were hunters (with more planning ahead, they could have been some kind of Dead Redneck I-Took-My-Beer-With-Me-Hunting Zombies), Connor was Connorzilla, and I wore my many-years-old--but-only-wear-once-a-year Halloween t-shirt. Okay, enough blabbing, here are the pics:

Hey, I don't think we've ever had a family Halloween picture. Sweeeet! And, I think it's one of only a handful of family pictures we've had in the past five years. Can we get an intervention for that? Does anyone have an inside connection to a professional photographer?

Connor took some time warming up to his costume, and the dragon head kind of bugged him. But he was so cute!

Dani says, "Am I done yet? Are you kidding me? I'm going to fill this thing to the brim, sister!"

At first, Connor just wanted to run around at the trunk-or-treat, but it didn't take long to get the vision of begging candy from people out of the back of their cars.

Aaahhhh, Connorzilla got pooped out lugging his full pail of candy around. More for me! And he's not awake to watch me swipe it, or to object when I take it away and hide it.

What was the haul this year? Well, it was pretty decent. Dani got too cold and didn't fill her bucket all the way, Connor filled his little ghost pail, Gilean did additional trick-or-treating with his friends, so his might actually last into next week (ha!), and we've still got leftovers from the candy we bought. If any of you didn't get your fill on Halloween, I could bring the leftovers to the Cowboy shindig next week. Better your dentist bill and protesting bathroom scales than mine!