Halloween is pretty much over at our house.

The kids met up with a neighborhood pal and wandered around a few blocks, filling buckets with candy. Our street, it seems, is the lamest they visited, with our house and a just a couple others decorated and lit. Our "street" is about 2 blocks long, between the busy street on the south and the T in the road to the north. They went also just two streets over the other way, hitting the more abundant lit houses on both sides of those four blocks. They came home with spilling-over gallon-ish buckets of chocolate and caramel.

I stayed home to hand out any to visitors. We had two sets of doorbell ringers that didn't live here. The first was a pair, a cowboy and cop. I held out a bowl with some candy in it, and they asked how much. I said to take a few, and they each fished out a couple favorites and headed off for more. It wasn't until two hours later my kids rang the bell. They dumped some candy out, to make room for more, and then set out to visit the few neighbors we know, since the street was otherwise dark. They came in and we shut down for the night, turning off the lights in the rooms to the front of the house, and the porch light. Clearly the national signal for "closed," right?

Shortly after, the doorbell rang again, and an apparent cold princess (you could make out the crown, but the rest was covered by a parka) called for her trick-or-treat. The kids did this delivery. The princess took a couple pieces, as I'd suggested to our kids would be right (really didn't set a limit, saying "give them some candy"). At grandma's house, there's a strict one-each policy, but there we hand out like 1600 pieces of candy. After the princess took her share, apparently her adult companion reached over and took a healthy handful. I'm not worried or concerned about the candy, but it made my kids chime about what a "greedy meanie" she was for far too long. I tried to quell the concern pointing out that was candy we'd planned to give out, and we didn't have the traffic that grandma had, or even that the next block had.

Three kids, and one handsy (assumed) parent, were all we got this year. Not even close to our peak year of six kids, set almost 15 years ago. Sure, most of those years we're not here, the last ten or so being at grandma's house helping her with the parade of kids. The pandemic put a shut-down there, but maybe next year, or with other adjustments, that can return again. Even though the kids ended up with a gallon of candy each, they'd rather visit grandma and see the costume parade. I'd much rather they appreciate and participate in that, too.

Everyone's healthy.