Halloween tip-toed in through the front door and left out the back without saying goodbye. The Halloween decorations (stored in plastic tubs up in the attic throughout the year) made it as far as the garage floor this year, where they remain.

Both kids (with Susan’s help) made rather than bought their costumes this year. Morgan dressed up as the Joker as he appeared in The Dark Night. She and Susan put together a costume, and Morgan did her own makeup. Mason dressed up as a cockroach. He found the costume online for $85; Susan sewed a reasonable replica for about $5.

On the Saturday before Halloween (which fell on a Monday this year), we participated in a neighborhood Trunk or Treat event. I have long stood against newer bastardizations of the traditional Trick or Treating model, but this year I gave in. Following a picture Susan found on Pinterest, we turned the trunk of Susan’s car into a big green frog and handed out candy to a steady stream of kids for almost two hours. Somewhere between 100 and 200 kids showed up to the Trunk or Treat event, and last year we only had three groups of trick-or-treaters to ring our doorbell, so it’s hard to argue with that.

On Halloween proper we drove around town and visited a few of our favorite people, like the Willraths and the Martins. At each stop, we would stay and visit for a few minutes while Morgan and trick-or-treated the immediate neighbors. It doesn’t seem like Morgan visited more than a dozen hours, but by the time she got home she declared that she had obtained exactly 156 items which included two orange plastic skeletons, a box of tattoos, and a Fiber One bar.

Except for a few candy wrappers littering the living room and the tubs of decorations sitting unopened in the garage, no trace of Halloween remains around here. Maybe next year I’ll… well, maybe next year.