Hobo Anyone?

Halloween is a stressful holiday for me. I would say even more stressful than Christmas. That's because I don't mind the preparations that come with Christmas--I like baking goodies and getting the house ready (on a small scale), and shopping isn't the worst thing I've ever had to do. But I DO mind the preparations that come with Halloween. I don't enjoy carving pumpkins and coming up with costume ideas is the hardest thing I have to do all year. I'm not joking...ALL YEAR!

It's in my genes. Once I outgrew the plastic-mask princess costumes you could buy in the store, my mom suggested that I dress up as hobo EVERY SINGLE YEAR thereafter. I guess being a hobo wasn't so bad because at least I could breathe, unlike when I had to wear those suffocating plastic masks that probably looked more like a hobo than a princess anyway. But the problem with MY particular hobo costumes is that nobody ever knew what I was, and even after I told them they still didn't know what I was. Come to think of it, I wasn't really sure what a hobo was either. But even if I had known, my costumes still fell short of giving justice to the title.

Thanks to the fact that the stores now provide better costume options than I had as a kid, my girls don't have to be victims of the "you have to be a hobo" passed-down genes. We do, however, recycle the same costumes year to year, so Leah and Meg get to be whatever Brita chose the previous year. I suppose there has to be some benefit to being the oldest child--so far a new Halloween costume every year is one of the few benefits Brita has been able to discover. Regardless, I think the hand-me-down costumes looked as fabulous this year as they did last. And if anyone ever complains, I just suggest that they be a hobo. Strangely enough, no one took me up on that option this year.

So this year Cleopatra took her pet tiger out trick-or-treating

and they even picked up a little ladybug along the way (who turned into a total firecracker once she discovered what to do with that blue gift bag dangling from her wrist...she refused to carry it any other way)

Trick-or-treating in our neighborhood this year was a completely different experience than our girls have ever had. In Texas, we stuck with the ward-hosted Trunk-or-Treat activities after one year of trying to trick-or-treat in our neighborhood. First of all, no one was home and one of our neighbors, even though his porch light was on, didn't have any candy so he threw some fruit cups into our kids bags before turning off the porch light for good.

This year the girls were running from door to door so they could get as much candy as possible. SCORE!!!

Once I got the costumes all "planned" I settled into the part of Halloween I like best...the food of course.

We continued our tradition of eating pumpkin seeds. Jared tries a new recipe every year. This year's seeds were pretty darn spicy...Mmmmm.

I made one of my favorite recipes - pumpkin bread with lots of chocolate chips

And for dinner we ate one of my favorite comfort foods, homemade chicken noodle soup with scones. Remember that strawberry jam I made a few weeks ago? It was perfect.

I survived Halloween. The food helped me through it.

Now the candy is finally gone and the costumes are tucked away to be used another year. Even though the food was great, the best part of this year's Halloween is that no one even had to be a hobo. Who knows though, maybe next year I'll have some takers.