Does anyone know what a warlock is? Or does?

Friday was Free Dress day with a Halloween theme at St. Jude (if you paid $1 per child to benefit the Beta Club). Fifty-three pound Jake still fits in the jack-o-lantern shirt my mom got him two Halloweens ago, but I did not tell him it was that old. Corey found Landen a new shirt at the Wal-Marts, which he did not want to wear until he found out it glowed in the dark.

Do all little boys look adorable in blue jeans? I have one with no hiney and one with a round hiney, but both are equally dapper when they wear jeans. I told Jake he looked like a small version of a grown man in jeans, and he said "thanks, I'm mature."

Tonight I was at work for the trick-or-treating festivities (darn) and Corey confessed that he was secretly hoping the boys would get conduct marks or in trouble on the bus and he would not have to take them. We are taking the Carrot approach to parenting: no level of removing their right to attend extracurricular activities or power on electronics will get them to adjust their behaviors, so we have started holding desirables in front of them. For the last two weeks they have been warned that just because we bought the costumes does not mean they have automatically won the right to wear them anyway. That right has to be earned.

We reinforced this for two weeks. Predictably, today Jake came home with a conduct mark for saying a game at his Halloween party was "stupid," for which I ripped him a new asshole (via phone from work) about how we are absolutely never rude. I pulled out the full name and demanded suggestions for what he SHOULD have said. Landen got a mark for forgetting to bring all his materials to class. So both of them were allowed to go door-to-door but neither of them were permitted to enjoy not one single smidge of candy out of their full buckets when they returned home.

Apparently this does not prevent the enthusiasm of going galavanting around the neighborhood in a ninja or warlock costume and asking people for candy. They have been on a sugarless high, upstairs giggling and playing. Corey had some notes to share with y'all about taking the boys trick-or-treating for the first time in several years:

• Landen was fifty feet from the house before he started complaining about his feet hurting.
• He had to tell Jake to "slow down" and wait for him before they were at the end of the block.
• They did not grasp the concept of "walk toward the porch lights" and kept asking Corey for which direction to turn.
• Apparently a plastic staff is too heavy to hold upright for long walks.

Behold, Corey's photography (and my cutesy edits.)

I asked Corey why Landen was wearing his Heelys, which always blister his feet, and Corey's exact words were "Because you weren't here and you're the better parent." There it is, immortalized on the Internets for all eternity.

At some point they met Jake's friend and classmate and our neighbor Grant and hit some houses together. Grant was a Dementor and his little brother a penguin.

Don't those buckets look like they are getting heavy. They're about 60% full from just out little neighborhood. I had one piece and Corey had three after the boys went to bed.

And Cydney Wilson partied like a Halloween Rock Star this weekend - first as Darth Vader (in a leather corset?) and then as a wolf (with no hair on her stomach.)

 
I just do not understand where these kids get all this energy. I cannot remember if my last dress-up Halloween was 2002 or 2005 or 2006. I repurposed a prom dress and went as a fairy all three years.