Halloween 2 or the Morning After

So, you survived the night with your little ones, or you survived a night of handing out candy or going to parties.  Congratulations, and welcome to the other side.  Last night and yesterday we had a lot of fun.  We trick-or-treated until our kids literally began to drop.  For us, that meant doing one side of a street and then the other, and we had 3 that were done.  The other 2 could have gone on for a little while longer, but after coming to my work, they had plenty of candy, so I didn't feel too bad calling it a night.  The kids looked great in their costumes and even our youngest got the whole get free candy idea.   It was a productive, seemingly long night and day.  On the car ride home, the long day finally caught up to each of the kids as they picked and bugged each other all the way.  Listening to your kids fight in the back seat  while you're sitting in the front is just so much fun.  I believe they use this as a form of torture in some countries.  Needless to say, when we finally got home and won the battle that is bed time,  we just crashed and went to sleep.

That brings us to this morning.  The morning after. Our two boys were up early, as always.  Every few minutes, one of them was coming in and asking us to open up some candy, and we weren't really keeping track.  Our children have learned that the best time to ask us for stuff is in the early morning when we are still trying to sleep and we just want them to go away.  The only problem is that our plan never works.  We have 5 kids, so that combined with the fact that they each of my kids needs something every two minutes, it ends up being a constant stream of neediness in the morning until we finally decide to pull our lazy bottoms out of bed.  At 5:30.  6, if we're lucky.  Today, we made it to 7:00, so it's almost like we got to sleep in, except that there was still that constant stream of neediness for about an hour before we got up.

I got up and walked out into our front room and was amazed at what I saw.  We had 2 buckets of candy from the trick or treating and from the candy we were giving out.  Not small bowls, BUCKETS.  This wasn't even all the candy.  Some of it was still out in the car, we were just too lazy to bring it in last night.  This was also in addition to the giant bowls of candy we had up on our dresser in our bedroom.  The 2 buckets were dumped all on the floor.  It was like a sea of candy in out living room. Well, not all candy.  There were some wrappers mixed in with the candy.  Who am I kidding?  It was mostly wrapper with a few pieces of candy mixed in.  The candy that was left was the kinds that nobody really likes, like the vanilla tootsie rolls.  Our 2 boys were sitting on the couches across from each other, each surrounded by a pile of their own wrappers in a sugar coma.  Our littlest girl was standing there, big  smile on her face, a tootsie pop in each hand, while our next youngest was picking up every vanilla tootsie roll she could find.  She's not picky, she just wanted sugar.

My wife and I just stood there and stared.  We realized that the kids were not to blame for this. They just wanted candy, and what kid doesn't?  It was our fault for leaving it where they could easily find and access it.  We should have known better.  Obviously, with 5 kids, this isn't our first rodeo, and it seems like this same scene plays out every year.  We know this is going to happen, yet every year it still does.  Why?  Because we are so exhausted for the actual night of Halloween, that we don't think ahead to the next day.  We only think about getting in bed.  So this same story plays out each year, followed by the next thing.  My wife takes away all the candy.  She scoops it all up and takes it to her secret hiding place.  And it is secret too.  Sometimes, even I can't find it.  Now, the rest of the day will be filled with kids asking for candy, us saying no, them finding stragglers that we didn't see and eating them.  Plus, they are all overtired and cranky, so they are all fighting with each other all day.  If they do find candy, they eat it, run around crazy from the sugar rush, then fight and crash once it wears off.  Kids love and look forward to October 31, parents hate November 1.

Maybe next year will be better.  I doubt it.  I am sure it will play out exactly the same as this year and last year and the year before that.  I guess it is one of our Halloween traditions.