Monday, October 26, 2009

The true benefits of having four children

On Saturday night we went to a Trunk-or-Treat at the church of one of my friends from work. We thought it would be a fun, low-key thing to do with the kids and no costumes were required.

They had a BLAST!

There were canival games set up inside (ring toss, bean bag toss, ladder golf, etc.) and free food. The kids played games for awhile and then we ate. Emily got pretty overstimulated pretty quickly--it was loud and there was a lot to see. Usually when she gets overstimulated and/or tired (here she was both, even though she'd had a nap in the afternoon) she gets overly affectionate with anyone and everyone. However, Saturday night she didn't try to hug a single person there!! Woohoo!!!

I did keep her on a short leash. :) She was either holding my hand or in my or Mark's arms the entire night. I'm not stupid and I'm not going to give her the opportunity to try to hug other people. :) But there were a few times that she could have reached out for people and she didn't--not once. It was great.

The other kids had a great time. I think it helps Danielle to have the boys lead the way. She always watched intently as they played the games first and then she took a turn. Alex really got into the games and he had so much fun.

After the games and food we went into the parking lot for the Trunk-or-Treat. For those of you not familiar with this, people park their cars in a parking lot and then open their trunks and you go from car to car trick-or-treating. It's usually safer than trick-or-treating on the streets and it's a little more controlled...perfect for our bunch.

The kids loved the trick-or-treating and wow did we come home with a lot of candy. I never really thought about how much we would multiply our candy haul with four kids! I decided we don't need to buy any candy for Halloween now...we can just pass out what we collected Saturday night. ;) Tim didn't get to trick-or-treat part of the time as he decided he didn't want to be polite and say thank you after people gave him candy. Not allowed in our household so he missed out on several cars due to a lack of manners.

The kids haven't even eaten any of the candy yet. They went straight to bed when we got home Saturday night and they never asked about it on Sunday (although they did play with all of their toys and pencils that they acquired there--the plastic frogs that you push on to make jump were a HUGE hit!).

Don't worry, I'm taking one for the team and making sure the kids don't get too much of the candy. And yes, I will be the one still on a sugar high at Thanksgiving!

5 comments:

Audrey said...

Hahaha! Yeah, I'm looking forward to raiding Jacob's candy this year - it's been a while! Here honey, let mommy check that KitKat bar first...

ArtworkByRuth said...

Hey, where are the picks!?! We didn't buy much either this year... We did a trunk or treat last year and the church folks decorated their areas with way more scary stuff than I let my kids see so we aren't repeating it this year! We are doing several harvest festivals, all indoors since this is the greater Seattle area!

Jane said...

Ben knows to give me the Runts every time!!! My kids don't eat much of the candy at all, it's all in the getting....

Courtney said...

Can you believe I didn't even take the camera in? I think we took it and left it in the car. I think we knew we were going to have our hands full holding on to everyone and all of their candy!

Thuy said...

I loved this post. I'm picturing a MOUNTAIN LOAD of candy among the four of them! Yum. Any Almond Joys? (My fave.) Proud of you for taking one for the team. :)