Averyday Life: Trick-or-Treat

Alright, so we got off to kind of a rocky start because someone did not want to wear her princess costume...

At this point I was pretty much over all the costume shenanigans and I wasn't going to let this amazing hairstyle by Lizzy go to waste. (I think this is my "Ok, shush, that's enough. You are fine. You are a princess, you're not going to die" face):

I decided to pull a "trick" to get the "treats." I cheerfully asked her if she wanted to go on a walk. She loves to take walks at Gammy's house so she didn't protest when I strapped her into the stroller. When we got to the first house, I was loudly whispering at her to say, "Trick-or-treat," and I think she got a little freaked out because she had no idea what was going on and strangers were suddenly in her face.

But we said, "Look, Avery, you get candy!"

As we walked away from the first house, the tears instantly dried as she dug into the bucket and remarked, "Oh... candy?"

Now mind you she has no idea what candy is, as we do not give her candy. But I guess she was just excited that these strangers were putting new things into her princess bucket.

That was all it took. I had planned to trick or treat at only 5 houses. We ended up hitting about 25 houses, stayed out way past her bedtime and filled her bucket up.

My favorite part of the night was walking down the street I grew up on with my brother, who noted, "I haven't trick-or-treated this neighborhood in years!" I then calculated that it had probably been close to 20 years since I had trick-or-treated there either. And we were happy to discover that a lot of the neighbors still live in the same houses.

As we rounded the corner, he said, "That's the house that used to give out the toothbrushes!" We started laughing about it, and I suggested that we go ring the doorbell. Aaron agreed but told me that he was pretty sure that the dentist who lived there had moved out years ago.

A woman answered the door, and we could barely contain ourselves as she handed Avery a little cellophane bag and said softly, "Here's a toothbrush for you!"

It's nice to know that some things never change....