Halloween 2013! (It rhymes! Say it out loud!)

We're still eating our Halloween candy, so the way I figure it, I'm not late with the Halloween Trick or Treat report.

And by the mere fact that we're still eating Halloween candy, you can easily skip to the not-surprise-ending that Trick or Treat 2013 was a resounding success!!

Halloween predictably began with costume shopping. Which is great when your kid knows exactly what they want to be. It can be not great when they know exactly what they want to be and the costume is impossible to find. But we got lucky this year - Caroline wanted to be Harry Potter, and Harry Potter she was. John was far less specific, but Clone Trooper was in the Star Wars universe, so of course, it was exactly what he wanted to be. Costumes - done.

The thing about Halloween costumes is that at this age, when they grow approximately an inch every eight minutes, there's no chance of using a costume twice. Unless, of course, you have parties and fall festivals and all kinds of goings on to celebrate a holiday that is a much bigger deal than it really should be, ifyouaskme. You didn't. So I'll get back to my story.

So Halloween arrives, Daddy saves the day by carving the jack o' lanterns while the kids are at school, Daddy also saves the day by getting all of the costume pieces together as well as glow bracelets for Trick or Treating, and Daddy saves the evening by having everything ready to go for dinner at 5:00 so that we can get Trick or Treating RIGHT AWAY at 6:00. Can't waste a minute, you know.

Halloween immediately became more fun for me when my friends Sarah and Jeff arrived with their own little Trick or Treater, Colt. We started this last year, and now that our kids have gone Trick or Treating together two years in a row, it's officially a Thing. Capital T Thing. This year, we also got to have our international student that we've adopted join us. Her first American Halloween! She shared with us that in Brazil, there are a lot more tricks than treats. Chalk another one up for the good ol' U. S. of A.

Christiane and the kids

Pizza eaten, costumes donned, time for obligatory pictures in the front yard.

And of course, obligatory Trick or Treat action photos. Which I only got a few of, because the "good" camera was completely out of space on the memory card. #momfail

Some of our neighborhood friends

The kids are still small enough that after about three or four blocks of hard core doorbell ringing and candy gathering, their little legs and feet have had enough. Which of course is fine with the grownups, so we headed home after about an hour or so out in the neighborhood.

New Halloween feature at our house this year: the sorting, counting, and categorizing of the candy:

Just enough to sort, not so much that we will have Halloween candy lingering at Valentine's Day. Halloween 2013 - we hit the sweet spot. (See how I did that?!)

Friendship. It's a Thing, too.