Halloween's A Comin'

Today I took the time to finally assess the candy damage from last year’s Halloween. I counted and weighed so I know what to buy for this year. I never got around to posting last year but Halloween is nuts here! I bought six HUGE bags of candy. The picture here shows just about 3 bags we had left after the night ended. We gave 5 pieces to each kid (the candies were a little smaller than jolly ranchers) and I estimate about 1,200 kids came through in just one hour.

The neighborhood officially does trick-or-treating for two hours but Brian ended up having to travel at the last minute so I hosted a dinner party then took my kids out for the first hour and handed out candy at the house for the second hour. This year I figure we can tag team and have Gina help too so I am planning on handing out candy for the full 2 hours. I expect more than 2,400 kids. Someone reports that at their downtown condo complex there are flyers for signups for a tourist bus to basically come watch the crazy Americans and their culture. It makes the newspaper each year and people come from all across the country to have fun on Halloween night.

The kids are already excited and today I secured a surprise costume for Ben he’s going to love. It’s a Mario costume from the Nintendo games.  Maddie and Jake are easy to please so any old thing from the dress up box makes them smile.

I’m getting excited for Halloween myself. I need to spend some time thinking up crazy fun decorations again this year. They were such a hit last year I’ve got to one up myself. Of course, I am also loathing everyone in the US that can just waltz into any random Target, Walmart or heck, even a stinky old ghetto gas station and pick up a bag of snack sized Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or other cheap candy to hand out. There is one store that sells Reese’s in Singapore and it’s downtown in the fancy pants expat mall and they cost about $3 for a candybar (2 cups).

I personally like to buy the variety pack of candy bars at Costco to hand out to my trick-or-treaters. I buy them nice and early and eat them the whole month of October. That way I can eat the quarter of the candy that I love and hand out the Almond Joy, Mounds, Crunch and Butterfingers. I make sure to eat all the Reese, Twix, Mars and Hershey’s bars. If I can’t make it through I stash them for later.

Another nice thing about October there is the candy bars don’t have to be in your fridge. If you want to eat it here without licking the chocolate right off the wrapper you’re gonna have to keep all chocolate in the fridge. Who knows. Maybe when I get back stateside I won’t be able to eat room temperature chocolate anymore.