Halloween With Circus Laird

I had a Plan. If everyone and everything complied with the Plan, the evening would not be psycho. Why, on earth, did I think this would happen????? Honestly. Someday I will learn I am not in control of anything.

The Plan was this: I would have all kidlets dressed, snacked, and ready to go visit the Fabulous Fooz (have I mentioned her yet??) at 4:30. We would stay until 5:00ish, then be home by 5:15. John would get off work, we would take some sickeningly cute pics, and I would feed the crumbgobblers while he started round 1 of trick-or-treating w/AC. John would then bring her home, we would put the trips to bed, and I would take AC to a few more houses since I had promised to go with her this year. Our Dalmatian (AC), 2 Ladybugs (MG and EL), and a Frog (IV) would have a great Halloween.

This is what really happened: John surprisingly got off work early, but it didn't matter. The kids didn't get in their costumes until 5:00, which meant the trio wasn't going to Fooz's house because they would want to eat and I just wasn't going to deal with the disaster of feeding them there. John took AC over, I shoved food into the three, and waited. And waited. And waited. They finally got home at 6:00ish, we dressed everyone, took mediocre-to-fair pics, and then I took the triplets over to Fooz's. In the meantime, AC's understandably fired up about going trick-or-treating so I called SuperBabysitter (yay!!!!), who came over to take Patch-the-Dalmatian to a couple houses. I get home, the three are freaking out, Patch is back and already hyped up on sugar, trick-or-treaters are lurking, and I'm throwing handfuls of candy at them. Two neighbors stop by and one is not-so-subtly trying to invite himself in to see our addition (he's talking to our contractor). I tell him 3x we're trying to get the crying kids to bed, that he can absolutely come back in 10 minutes, and he finally gives up. The trick-or-treaters are confused. Where we live, you see, kids have to tell a joke or sing a song or do SOMETHING to get a treat. It's the rules. Everyone adheres to them. Last year, SuperBabysitter's mom took candy back from a kid who told an off-color joke. It's serious business. So, the kids had no idea what to do when we had a bowl of candy sitting on the front porch, they could see us running around inside, and I'm trying to wave at them to just grab-n-go. They just stood there. I would end up opening the door, with a kid in an arm, grab a few thousand calories of kid-crack and throw them in their bags. I felt sort of bad b/c they were all prepared to tell their joke and I didn't give them a chance. I digress. We finally got the wee ones to bed (not as late as I thought) and I finally got to take AC out for the first time. Not so bad.

Next year I'll have a different Plan.

AC, before she wanted the nose wiped off and the eye patch got smeared.