Trick or Treat

I loved Halloween when I was a kid. We lived on military bases, my parents thought we were completely safe, and we would trick-or-treat like normal little kids-walking from house to house with a huge group of kids from the neighborhood, and then returning home to give out candy at the door. It was totally awesome. My parents weren't especially concerned about our candy, there wasn't any real fear of razor blades...my mother would "inspect" our candy, but that was really a code for sorting through our candy, eating the stuff she liked, and then returning the remainder to us. Luckily she has some pretty horrible taste in candy (she eats black jelly beans. Enough said.) so that wasn't even bad.

And then we moved to Alabama. And we were no longer military. Instead we were now living in no-man's land where our nearest neighbor was an elderly couple and everyone drives their kids trick-or-treating. It was totally lame. My father, not being a huge fan of people in general, was really not down with the whole carting-your-kids-around-creation-for-candy thing. Instead he preferred to buy us some candy and keep us at home. My first Halloween in Alabama we went out to dinner at Red Lobster. The following year we dressed up and were taken to my grandparents' house where we were given a zip-lock back of candy apiece. Seriously. Moving to Alabama killed Halloween. Every year to this day, my sisters dress up for Halloween and give out candy at the door...mostly to kids that are way too old to still be trick-or-treating (i.e. they drove themselves to our house for candy cause they knew where we lived.) It's not a real happenin' holiday.

This year I live in a nice little neighborhood full of families. I live down the street from an elementary school. There are sidewalks all over the place and every day I see at least 10 kids under the age of 10 within a 2 block radius of my house. This year I'm going to give out candy for Halloween. To actual children. That are cute. And it's going to be awesome.

I'm so excited. :)