The Loot

Saturday, after trunk-or-treat and visiting grandma, Grant took the kids home to bed, and I went with some friends to the “Nightmare Factory” here in town. The Oregon School for the Deaf has been putting on a haunted house as a fundraiser for years. This year, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition swooped in to help update their basement and their haunted house. Read more about the Extreme Makeover visit HERE, or watch the episode featuring the Oregon School for the Deaf HERE.

As I was driving to the haunted house, I got a text from Grant, who was in the process of putting the girls to bed, saying, “Your youngest has a death grip on her bucket. She is telling me at the top of her lungs, ‘I need mine bucket!’” I laughed so hard! I can totally picture her little face as she told her daddy to back off.

While it was really fun to go, I think it would have been scarier if it hadn’t been quite so crowded. With the people in line so close in front of us, there was really no guess work about where someone might jump out at you. No element of surprise there. The 40min. we waited in line in the rain is the reason my friend, Laurie is sporting the slick hairdo and I look like I’ve been drooling (some rain dripped under my jacket). The pirate behind me is Lindsay, the friend from Grant’s work who invited me (through Grant volunteering me) to go to the haunted house, and next to her is Marcus.

After that, hot chocolate was in order. Laurie and I went and got hot chocolate, and it wasn’t until I was back in our driveway that I remembered I was going to go buy some toys to trade the kids for their candy.

The girls didn’t get much time to munch their candy on Saturday because we had so many activities going on, and then it was time for bed. So we decided to let them have as much candy as they wanted to during the day (as long as they weren’t going to make themselves sick), and then we would trade their candy for a new toy.

I had heard of this idea from my sister in past years, but it just didn’t sound as fun to me. In past years, Eleanor would have some candy here and there the first few days, but then I would put up her bucket and only give her some if she remembered to ask or if she earned it in some way. Usually, she forgot about it quickly, and I didn’t have to worry about her eating way too much candy (plus, her daddy ate a bunch of it for her). This year, Eleanor was much less likely to forget about her candy, and Phaedra just wanted more, more, more!

After breakfast on Sunday, we let the girls have their buckets and told them the deal we were going to make. I had some fun taking pictures of them going through their loot. (Daddy had let them spend the night in their costumes as jammies.)

They both had said the first candy they wanted to eat was a sucker.After the first picture I took of Phaedra with her suckers, she kept asking me if I wanted to “take picture mine sucker?”Eleanor loved asking me what each candy was called.

They had plenty of candy. Phaedra kept asking for suckers, sucking on them for one minute, and then putting them in the garbage. Their candy-fest was interrupted by church, so they weren’t stuffing down candy all day. When we got home, we ate lunch and then told the girls they could choose five pieces of candy to keep in their buckets and the rest they put in a bowl. Eleanor got a My Little Pony in exchange for her candy, and Phaedra got a ballerina princess doll that is similar to one Eleanor got for her birthday that she’s been coveting. She calls it a “bannoweena.” I love it!

I was a little worried about the exchange, but they seemed really happy. We weren’t exactly prepared for trick-or-treaters that day because we usually skip out on Halloween to a grandparent’s house. (Halloween is one of Grant’s less enthusiastic holidays, to say the least.) After all the fun on Saturday, we just felt like staying home, so we actually passed out some of the girls’ candy to trick-or-treaters. It didn’t phase the girls a bit; Eleanor was excited to hand it out. We only had about 4-5 groups stop at our house, so there was plenty left for Daddy.