Halloween

I used to Trick-or-Treat when I was a kid. My mother would bring my brother and me downtown to a neighborhood and we would walk from door to door saying "trick-or-treat" and the nice people would come to the door, comment on our costumes and deposit something yummy into our bags. Has it changed so much?

Last night my girls got all dressed up in costumes, looking forward to going to the houses on our street. But when we got there--with only one exception--we were greeted with lit-up porches with bowls of candy on them. The girls picked one thing from each container and we went home. There were no neighborly "trick-or-treat" greetings or comments on the costumes. There was no visiting or meeting the new people. The impression I get is that because there are "only" 12 houses on our street, people who live here take their kids to bigger, better places to get more loot (we don't do this--and we are also the people who give out pencils and stickers--mostly because I have it on good authority that I don't want to make my kids grow up to be the kids of the woman who gives out toothbrushes...don't worry, Melissa, I don't reveal my sources!) It is definitely sad to see this holiday turned into an exercise in going house to house to get candy, with nothing more to it. Although I will spare you a whole blog post on the commercialism of the holiday and making kids think they need the most expensive costume to get the biggest bag full of candy, I will say that I think my girls were disappointed by the lack of people who were home to greet them--they enjoy chatting with the neighbors!

The other thing that bothered me last night was the number of cars driving around my street dropping kids off at each house then driving to the next. I live on a dead end street--it is maybe half a mile long--with 12 houses on it. Really, walking from house to house is not a challenge. My 4-year-old can do it. In fact she did it when she was three. So explain this to me--why drive? Are you afraid of the exercise? The fresh air? What is it? Is it the same reason the school bus drives up to each and every house instead of picking up the kids at the end of the street? Am I the only one who actually had to walk to a bus stop? Either I'm getting old or kids are getting very lazy. Or perhaps it is both. But I digress.....

Our disappointments aside, the girls were very cute last night. Erin was Felicity Merriman (of the American Girl series) and Megan was a fairy princess/ballerina. Evan, of course, dressed up as the cutest baby ever. Underneath that costume he is really quite hideous. (NOT!)