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Friday, October 30, 2009
Happy Halloween!
Happy Halloween to all those who give me the honor of visiting here!
This is quite a holiday for us this year. My grandsons are staying with us while our daughter and son-in-law are training for a new job and moving into new digs. Because the boys are but wee ones my husband and I are taking them trick-or-treating.
We haven’t done this in about 12 years or so (my guess is it’s a lot longer than that). When we did, we took the kids to one or more of the local malls.
Why, you ask? Easy-I am just not a lover of walking around in the dark and cold. That’s right, we usually get a cold snap with bitter winds about 3 days a year-one of them is Halloween.
When our kids were Dylan and Aidan’s ages we decided rather than freeze our patooties off (yes, that is a real medical term for a body part) and then spend the rest of the week warding off the flu (another assured thing that happens to me when I am in climate weather) we’d just go to the mall.
It’s well lit, the candy’s safe and most of the neighborhood kids and their parents were there as well. In fact, we’d make arrangements with the other parents to meet at whatever fast food place we liked in the food court and make the evening really special and pop for hamburgers and fries for the occasion! The kids didn’t have to wear a heavy coat over their costumes, pictures didn’t come out with the dreaded red-eye syndrome and everyone had a great time.
Plus, our neighborhood doesn’t seem to “do” trick-or-treating. Seriously. In 20 years we haven’t even hit the double digits of times our doorbell rang.
As the kids got older-we continued the tradition, but we somehow wound up taking our kids best friends and treating them to the fast food. We also found ourselves finding and saving the tables and giving the kids a meet up time. Let’s face it-at 10 and 12 kids do not like the idea of mommy and daddy trailing 2 steps behind them anymore. Another reason to love doing this activity at the mall-lots of parents, lots of security guards and with the threat of “be here by Xtime or I’ll be hunting you down” the kids are sure to have their fun and be ready for MickeyD’s early!
This will be our first time taking on the role of grandparents. My parents went with us once. They didn’t accept the invitation after that. We’re looking forward to it. Dylan is going as Capt. Hook and Aidan as Peter Pan. (I did NOT pick out that one) We’re going at the start of the fun about 3-4 in the afternoon. Then we’ll go upstairs to the Burger King. Afterwards-I’ll go home with the boys and my husband will join our son and fiancée for a Clippers basketball game.
That was actually the original plan for our Halloween celebration this year. I’m thinking-I’m getting the better end of the party.
This is quite a holiday for us this year. My grandsons are staying with us while our daughter and son-in-law are training for a new job and moving into new digs. Because the boys are but wee ones my husband and I are taking them trick-or-treating.
We haven’t done this in about 12 years or so (my guess is it’s a lot longer than that). When we did, we took the kids to one or more of the local malls.
Why, you ask? Easy-I am just not a lover of walking around in the dark and cold. That’s right, we usually get a cold snap with bitter winds about 3 days a year-one of them is Halloween.
When our kids were Dylan and Aidan’s ages we decided rather than freeze our patooties off (yes, that is a real medical term for a body part) and then spend the rest of the week warding off the flu (another assured thing that happens to me when I am in climate weather) we’d just go to the mall.
It’s well lit, the candy’s safe and most of the neighborhood kids and their parents were there as well. In fact, we’d make arrangements with the other parents to meet at whatever fast food place we liked in the food court and make the evening really special and pop for hamburgers and fries for the occasion! The kids didn’t have to wear a heavy coat over their costumes, pictures didn’t come out with the dreaded red-eye syndrome and everyone had a great time.
Plus, our neighborhood doesn’t seem to “do” trick-or-treating. Seriously. In 20 years we haven’t even hit the double digits of times our doorbell rang.
As the kids got older-we continued the tradition, but we somehow wound up taking our kids best friends and treating them to the fast food. We also found ourselves finding and saving the tables and giving the kids a meet up time. Let’s face it-at 10 and 12 kids do not like the idea of mommy and daddy trailing 2 steps behind them anymore. Another reason to love doing this activity at the mall-lots of parents, lots of security guards and with the threat of “be here by Xtime or I’ll be hunting you down” the kids are sure to have their fun and be ready for MickeyD’s early!
This will be our first time taking on the role of grandparents. My parents went with us once. They didn’t accept the invitation after that. We’re looking forward to it. Dylan is going as Capt. Hook and Aidan as Peter Pan. (I did NOT pick out that one) We’re going at the start of the fun about 3-4 in the afternoon. Then we’ll go upstairs to the Burger King. Afterwards-I’ll go home with the boys and my husband will join our son and fiancée for a Clippers basketball game.
That was actually the original plan for our Halloween celebration this year. I’m thinking-I’m getting the better end of the party.
