Celebrating Halloween {2013}

The day was grey.

Dreary.

And threatened rain.

But we finally got our Halloween.

When Madeline woke up early this morning, she could not control her excitement. And it didn’t dawn on me until a little while later. She doesn’t really know a real Halloween. With Hurricane Sandy last year, and Snowtober the year before, she was two years old the last time we were able to go trick-or-treating.

So this is really the first year that she really grasped what it was all about. Or what it was meant to be.

And I would have been excited too.

Halloween parade at school. Party with their class. Trunk-or-treating earlier in the week. And capped off with trick-or-treating tonight.

Nick went as an Emperor of Evil, and Madeline as a cheerleader. Nick ended up trick-or-treating with us for a little while, and then met up with a friend. Madeline trick-or-treated for two and a half hours. #cantstopwontstop

The perfect day.

And they both fell asleep in about eleven minutes after we walked in the door tonight.

True story.

Once the kids went to bed, I dumped all their candy onto the dining room table to go through it. And then I decided to sort it, curious as to what their haul had.

One package of dots
20 Twizzlers
2 Laffy Taffy
7 Jolly Rancher (I really wish people would stop giving out super-hard, small Jolly Ranchers on Halloween)
1 Clark bar
1 package of Raisinets
13 Milky Way
10 Twix
15 Starburst
3 Almond Joy
1 gobstopper
2 Sour Patch Kids
1 Milk Dud
10 lollipops
5 SweetTarts
15 Skittles
7 Tootsie Rolls
1 Airhead
2 Baby Ruth’s
6 Butterfingers
9 Three Musketeers
5 Swedish Fish
8 Peanut M&M’s
18 regular M&M’s
15 Nestle Crunch
17 Kit-Kats
2 Oreos
3 bags of pretzels
4 bags of chips
1 package of Goldfish
1 package of Nutter Butter
1 package of chocolate covered pretzels
Two Rice Krispies Treats
1 Hershey nugget
1 fruit snack
22 Whoppers
37 Snickers
8 Hershey bars
31 Reese’s
Fifty-seven cents

There were about eight full size candy bars in the stash (generous houses!), and Snickers were definitely the clear favorite amongst the choices to give out.

I put aside the Nick and Madeline’s favorites, packaged up the favorites of a few friends, put a stash together for the office, and the rest will be turned into the buy back program, who send it off to troops stationed overseas, which I love, and we’ve been doing for a few years.

One house was giving away apples, and out of our group of 11 kids, not one kid took one. Nick was seriously bummed about that later when he realized he could have used them to make apple pie.

Tonight’s haul.

And it doesn’t include what they collected earlier in the week at a neighborhood trunk-or-treat.

Yep, I’d say Halloween 2013 was good to us this year.

And we’re thankful.