Halloween Manners... or Not

Now that Summer is going to bed at 6pm and taking (usually) 2-3 hour naps in the afternoon, I might finally start to chip away at my blogging. (Or I might clean my house, but blogging is way more enjoyable).

We attempted pumpkin carving for the first time this year. The kids did not find it amusing to stick their hands in pumpkin guts. But they did enjoy drawing faces on the pumpkins for Anthony to carve.

No family costume theme for Halloween this year. I just didn't have it in me. And it worked out for the best. Austin intended to be a spider, Ruthie intended to be Ariel and I intended to take the kids trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. But we ended up at my parent's house that evening and we decided to stay. So instead, Austin wore his brand new super-cool Batman pajamas (we bought earlier that day) and Ruthie wore a costume my mom had in her basement from long-long ago.


Alright, you tell me... which one is Ruthie and which one is little Heidi? Ruthie is almost 3 here and I think I was 4.

Antho opted to stay with baby Summer...

While my mom, Heather and I took the kids out trick-or-treating. My kids were such crack-ups that night! We all got quite a kick out of it.

Mr. Austin is a funny kid and doesn't like all candies. He particularly dislikes m&m's and most other chocolates in preference for chewy things like starbursts. At the fourth house of the night, Austin plucked the proffered m&m bag from his candy tote, handed it back to the lady who'd dropped it in and kindly said, "No thanks. I don't like m&m's."

She sweetly held out the bowl and allowed him to pick any chocolate confection he desired. He pawed through the bowl then looked up and said, "I don't like any of that. What else do you have?"

I tried to shoo him off the porch, but to prevent an unhappy customer the lady held up a finger and said, "Wait right here. You're mom's going to hate me for this," then disappeared into her kitchen. She returned with a bag of red liquid, hooked to a syringe tube, labeled "Bag o' Blood."

Austin wasn't quite sure if this was really any better, but decided to take a chance and took the bag. Yet before we could make it off the porch, Ruthie stepped closer to the door and called up to the lady, "But why is my mom going to hate you?!" All of us adults got a good laugh out of the whole situation and finally sauntered off to the next house.

Between houses, I took a moment to explain to Austin that it wasn't polite to put the candy back. He should accept it graciously no matter what it was and if he didn't like it he could always give it to me.

Next house. The homeowner here held out a bowl of full-sized candy bars to choose from (every kid's dream!). Austin picked a bag of skittles for himself, then took a bag of peanut m&m's (my favorite) and gave them to me. I laughed, embarrassed, and put the bag back, eliciting Austin's confusion, "but mom, you said to give the candy to you!"

Before we got to the next house I tried to explain to Austin again that he should only take 1 candy and to take the one he wanted, but if there wasn't anything he liked to take something anyway and say thank you and that he could give it to me later.

Next house. The man here dropped a candy in to Austin's bag. While he was offering one to Ruthie, Austin dug the offending candy out of his bag, slapped it in my palm and said, "You can have this one too mom." And so it went, house after house, Austin passing the candy off to me before the door even closed. I gave up trying to explain Halloween manners to him, content that he was at least saying thank you, and ended up reliving my own childhood as I filled my jacket pockets with candy.