At work, we had a massive potluck and I definitely won’t be packing a lunch next time we have a potluck. I’m used to potlucks where most people bring desserts and you have to bring your own “meal”. Yesterday’s potluck had the expected massive table of desserts but people also brought in 2 kinds of chili, 2 kinds of stew, roast beef, potato salad, a veggie tray, crackers and cheese.
At home, we weren’t sure what to expect for trick-or-treaters as this is our first Halloween in the new house. I’d talked to a neighbor and he said to expect something like 50-80 kids. We bought 2 large bags of candy and had some Halloween toys from previous years. Naively, we thought this would be enough. And perhaps it would have been if we only got 50-80 kids, but we actually got somewhere between 100-120 kids1! Still our goodies held out until about 7:45PM and trick-or-treating officially ended at 8:00PM; so we didn’t do too badly.
Overall, the kids were polite and it was a fun evening. Especially since I was lazy and let Ariesna do all the running around to get the candy to the kids2. However there were a couple of downers during the evening; for one, there were several kids who stood on the porch looking in their bags after getting their treats asking what they’d been given. What the heck is up with that? Sure, Ariesna was tossing some toys in with the candy but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what they were. Especially if they wait until they get home and really look over their loot. I probably wouldn’t have minded it much, but most of them doing it were the older kids who were probably borderline too old to be trick-or-treating anyway. So it was really ticking me off.
1 My wife has the exact number, but I forgot what she said it was.
2 I wasn’t entirely lazy, I spent about half the night trying to get a a fire blazing in the fireplace.
You’re lucky those same kids did not come back and TP your house or throw a few jack-o-lanterns on your front porch. For Halloween, The Mob rules, and that mob is the kids. Always remember that.
None of the kids seemed upset with what they got, just confused.
When kids came around to our porch, we told them to take two pieces of candy out of the candy bowl, and then to grap a frog toy or eyeball eraser out of the toy bowl. It wasn’t done preemptively, but nobody asked what they’d gotten, and everyone seemed happy with their booty. In fact, some kids refused multiple treats, and took exactly one piece of candy (this was probably on orders from their parents).
Also, you guys already had a chimneysweep come around? That’s awesome! We’ve got to come up for a movie-and-a-fire night.
Yup, we had the chimney sweep in a week or 2 back. Now what we need is a good source for firewood and kindling. The previous owner left us a few fires worth of logs, but no kindling which makes starting the fire much harder.