Halloween Festivities

I'm still wiping the sweat from my brow from all the Halloween hoopla this week.

Each year I start to dislike this holiday a tad bit more. I mean, seriously, it is a lot of work. And I am a lot of tired. But every year I fall a little more in love with it by the end.

Even though I abhor the mounds of candy that come in, dressing kids up over and over, and cleaning up all the paraphernalia for days on end, there are moments where I think it's the best celebration ever. I love seeing the creative ideas people come up with, feeling the warm camaraderie at the boys' schools and in our neighborhood, and watching our children glow with excitement.

Oh, and swiping all of the Reese's and Twix from the boys' buckets.

This year's festivities began at our neighborhood Trunk or Treat party.

Crew is always a hot commodity to be passed around.

My brother's favorite part about Halloween is setting up our trunk with all sorts of contraptions and scrounged up decor. Even though I insisted we were indifferent about the trunk being decorated at all this year, he showed up three hours before the main event with equipment. 

He rigged up his GoPro to produce a live screen feed. It was quite the hit.

The GoPro that was fixed to the top of the trunk caught still shots every 30 seconds. So here is Trunk or Treat in a nutshell.

And what do you know, when it came time for awards, we won best trunk. 

But that wasn't all. My parents happened to be visiting for the weekend, and since my dad is the best cook I know, I put him on chili duty. His pot of chili placed first in the chili cook-off. Which means that I now have a larger-than-life trophy sitting in my kitchen that I need to store somewhere for the next year. 

I felt bad about sweeping the awards. But I took comfort in knowing that I couldn't take any of the credit.

And I loved seeing my dad's smile glow with pride for being recognized for one of his cooking concoctions.

We barely recovered from the weekend's festivities when the actual day of Halloween rolled around and it was time to celebrate all over again.

It started with the parade at Nash's preschool. We enjoyed the annual performance of "I'm a Mean Old Witch With a Hat" and other Halloween favorites.

Then, we hightailed it over to Blake's school to catch the end of his parade. After parking several blocks away, we made it just in time for the Kindergarteners to walk by.

My little Mickey Mouse came along for the ride, of course.

I stayed at Blake's school to help at his Halloween party. Yes, my very first experience as "room mom." I loved that I got to watch him turn his decorated cookie into an intricate forest replica.

He even proclaimed me to be "very funny" as I attempted to block those Kindergartener's bean bags from landing in buckets. Hey, I'll take it while I still can.

We took a true fall walk, crispy leaves and all, back to our car.

Next, we booked it over to Troy's office to fill up the boys' buckets with insane amounts of candy. Each row of desks encouraged the boys to take handfuls. I dumped all the candy out at one point and they filled their buckets to the brim all over again.

Needless to say, we really didn't need to go trick-or-treating from door to door. But, alas, it was all about the Halloween experience. And the boys were still in good spirits (could have something to do with the sugar high they were on), so out we went with neighborhood friends.

Blake organized the candy at the end of the night to show the haul they made. Wow.

Though sometimes I think I'd be okay with skipping this holiday and the exhaustion that comes with it, not having the memories made is a sad, sad thought.

But I'm okay for Halloween not to come back for another whole year.