Last Blogger

We always have a decent turnout for Halloween, somewhere around 150 trick-or-treaters. Last year, we decided to make a change though. We had always given out the regular stuff that most people give, small chocolates, cheezees (sp?), chips, etc… Some new health issues came to light for us and we started shifting how we eat and thought that we could do better for the kids at Halloween as well. Here’s the hard part. Kids don’t want to get fruit on Haloween. That’s a good way to get your house egged. I don’t know how easy it is to get egg off of brick, but I don’t ever want to find out. Besides, with the rampant paranoia that goes around this time of year, what parent would let their kid eat an apple or other unpackaged food. It’s just easier/safer to toss that stuff out since there’s so much in the kid’s bag anyways. So my wife found a great idea online; give them hot chocolate.

Now hot chocolate isn’t exactly on your traditional list of recommended foods for young people, but it’s a whole heck of a lot less bad for them than the chocolates we were handing out the year before. Since the boxes of hot chocolate come with 10 small packs in them, you can hand them out in individual sizes readily in a sealed, safe package. Last year we thought we’d give it a try and overall the kids seemed to like it a lot. We went for it again this year and I think the kids convinced us to stick with it from here on out. There were lots of kids who got it and turned excitedly to their parents to scream, “Mom/Dad, hot chocolate!” but one kid stood out. He arrived on our stairs with half a can of pop in one hand, clearly riding the sugar rush through his last bunch of houses. We gave him some hot chocolate, he looked up with great big saucer-sized eyes and half-shouted, “Best House!” and promptly ran off to ask his mother if they could have the hot chocolate tonight.

Halloween’s great fun in our neighbourhood. It’s nice and brief (about a 2 hour window), the kids are mostly young and their costumes are always great.