Trick-or-Treat '07

As has now become the tradition, I went over to the T's house for trick-or-treat tonight. The weather was nice. Not too cold. And with the shifted around daylight savings time, the sun was still up for almost the whole first hour. My sister and I commented that it actually felt a little strange to be trick-or-treating when it wasn't dark outside.

I was happy to see that the 3 biggest T's finally got new costumes. Yay! Being in a big family, they're usually forced to wear the costumes for at least 2 years. Or wear a hand me down that was worn by the next biggest kid the year before. I'm sick of that damn elephant. Thankfully, Teagan will outgrow it by next year. The trunk sticking straight out of his head just looks like an erect....uhhhh... Teletubbie character. So we have a new race car driver, ninja, and ballerina this year.
This is what it actually looks like from the top of his head. Oh yeah... now you see it. It really is an elephant.
Tanner insisted I take a pic of his best ninja warrior pose. He actually had the nerve to refuse to trick-or-treat at the first couple of houses. He handed me his plastic jack-o-lantern and said he was just going to walk around with us. I guess he thought he was too old for all this nonsense. Until his mom informed him that if he wasn't collecting candy then he would not be eating his brothers' and sister's. He quickly had a change of heart.

This is one of the perks of having so many kids in the family. Just look at that candy pile!! We had a great time. Teagan was really into it this year. He had fun running up to the doors and getting candy with the big kids. Of course, as we were sorting the goods, Aunt Krista needed to sample some of the chocolate to make sure it was safe to eat. Wink wink.

On our route, we stopped by the local fire house to check out the fire trucks. The firemen set up a haunted house inside every year. The boys wanted to check it out. Tatum insisted on going, too. She has to keep up her tough girl image, ya know. It was a little scary. They had strobe lights, fog machines, people in scary masks jumping out at you. But Tatum kept her cool. I kept expecting her to have a meltdown but she didn't. About 30 seconds into it, Travis asked if he could hold my hand though. After we got outside, he said he didn't like it. He came out and told his mom that it "really freaked him out." LOL! Hopefully, we didn't psychologically scar him for the rest of his life.

Below is an illustration of what happens to a normal 4 year old when she has too much candy right before bedtime. You can just see the sugar coarsing through her veins as her eyes begin to bug out of her head.

Suddenly, her body starts to spasm and her tongue flops out uncontrollably in response to the sweets overload.

Her face contorts into an evil grimace until finally.....

she completely loses control of hand and finger movements as well. Be warned. Don't let this happen to your child.

After we were done, Mommy went to work and Aunt Krista went home. Leaving poor Daddy to fend for himself. Muwa ha ha ha.... It'll probably be a pretty good fight to get these 4 into bed tonight. But then again they should be crashing down off their sugar highs any second.

I also made a very important decision tonight. The first year I take Mia trick-or-treating she'll be dressed as a penguin! I may be in my motorized wheelchair and the T's will probably all be married and trick-or-treating with their own kids by then. But I'll have to find the cutest, most amazing penguin costume for her before she gets too opinionated and tries to decide for herself what she wants to dress up as.

Sigh.....someday.