Halloween...a recap

alpenglow \AL-puhn-gloh\, noun:
A reddish glow seen near sunset or sunrise on the summits of mountains.

Sentence: As we climbed up the mountain side, we stopped in awe to admire the alpenglow.

I have to write about the festivities of last night to give you all a good chuckle or two. I got home last night to see that the M.U. (maternal unit) had already neatly arranged the candy in a bowl...all prepared for trick-or-treaters. She had one bag of chocolates open on one side of the bowl and one bag of gum filled the other side of the bowl. I proceeded to put stickers (the Jesus loves you labels I made) on the candy bars. In fear that I was opening up more bags of candy, the MU ran into the kitchen to see what I was doing. After realizing I was not "messing up" her arrangement, she relaxed and settled back in to watch the news. Mainly out of curiousity, I had to ask her why she didn't just open all 3 bags of chocolate. What was she saving the other two for? For us to eat? Afterall, I'm watching my intake and she has diabetes...so this wouldn't be a smart thing to do. Her reply? "I'm just saving."

I shrugged and started dinner. It wasn't long before the doorbell rang, and I yelled out to her that her friends arrived. She grabbed the candy and said, "Juth a minute..." towards the door. The kid at the door says, "I like bubble gum." And instead of giving him an extra one (which is what the kid was hoping for), my mom says..."I already gave you one."

At that point, I was thrilled when my niece called me to ask me if I would take her and my nephew trick-or-treating. It beat listening to my mom the stingy grinch all night with these kids...despite the fact that we had a whole stash of candy still unopen! So, I headed over to my brother's house to find my niece, the karate kid and my nephew, mr. pumpkin head all ready to go. Marissa had offered Andrew a crash course on Halloween etiquette, which he sampled on me when I gave him the first stash of candy (that I snuck out of my mom's carefully calculated bowl). Andrew looked straight up at me, held his bowl in front of my face, and said, "twick o tweat" as if his life depended on it....followed by a "thanku" when he heard the candy hit the bucket.

Taking him out to do the real thing was a different story. If any of the houses had decorations in front of the door, the boy freaked out. His sister would then coax him to the door step by reciting their mantra..."we gotta the candy"...As soon as he got the candy he took off running down the drive at high speeds and practically jumped into my arms saying, "I'm scared of that pumpkin!" (pointing at the jack-o-lantern lit up the doorstep). I asked him how he could be scared of a pumpkin when he was a pumpkin. His explanation was very simple. "i'm a cute pumpkin. that one's scary." Kids...gotta love em'.