The Last Halloween

I survived yet another All Hallows' Week. Or All Hollering Week, maybe.

I love Halloween. I do. But like the majority of you who voted in the poll this week, Halloween for me is all about the kids. For me personally it doesn't mean much more than a mad scramble to finish costumes and make endless baskets of food for parties and multiple rounds of trick-or-treating to chaperon. Then when the sugar intake begins, my sanity quickly erodes until we all wake up about a week later with a sugar hangover.

(Speaking of the sugar hangover, we haven't quite got there yet . . . we're still in the midst of the carb-induced madness.)

Anyway, in our family there have to be two sets of costumes, at least for the kids going to school. Like I mentioned before, my kids needed to be book characters for school, but they refuse to be book characters for Halloween. (How boring, Mom!) But with my long-suffering mother's help, we did manage to finish the two costumes by Friday morning. Behold Marta from Big Moon Tortilla, and Froggy from Froggy Learns to Swim:

Then for the ward trunk or treat later that night, we had the real Halloween costumes-- a witch, a Home Depot race car driver, and a princess. Fortunately, all the costumes survived, so they were able to wear them again for Saturday night:

On the official Halloween night, we drove up to my parents' house and crashed their ward/neighborhood block party like we have nearly every year we've been in Arizona. It was fun, and mercifully short. Since everybody who comes just sets up chairs on the sidewalk as candy-passing-out-stations, it doesn't take very long to trick-or-treat, even while getting far more candy than I would ever like my children to have at one time.

Naturally, since there have been multiple festivities for the holiday, I can safely say I got to enjoy Halloween to the brim this year. When J asked me on the way home Saturday night if that was the "last Halloween," I gratefully answered yes.

Now on with holiday season! Let's see if I can get a chance to enjoy Thanksgiving before the Christmas season is in full swing!