Trick or Treat...

Halloween. I know that some people wait for it all year and decorate their homes like the seasonal aisle at Walmart and I LOVE participating in their fun--I do. I love going to OTHER people's houses to look at their decorations and even to help if they need me to. For us, the only decorations we've been known to have are the overgrown weeds in our garden and the white-trash trash that accrues in our yard (TOASTER OVENS, for example...). We usually carve a few pumpkins, though this year we almost missed THAT. Luckily, there was a place that still had them--ONE place that still had them--and THEY were only charging six bucks a pumpkin. SIX BUCKS A PUMPKIN. Eighteen dollars later, I head home, knowing there is NO WAY we will be carving them until mid-November. They are FROZEN. We probably won't even carve them at all--goodbye eighteen dollars. My Halloween moms are cringing right now. How could I wait so long for the Halloween experience? My friend Laura starts getting ready in August. How COOL for her kids! I LOVE looking at the photos of all the fun she and her friends have getting ready for and enjoying Halloween. My friend Marcia always gets a pumpkin the size of Texas and generally hands out beer and hot dogs along with the sweet treats. THAT is something I can get on board with--SOMEONE ELSE providing the fun FOR my family. My friend Cathy seriously owns enough Halloween stuff to open up her own Spirit of Halloween store. I'm serious--if they made it, she has it and no words can really describe her Halloween...menagerie...? Their houses are like Halloween wonderlands and I love driving by with my kids or bringing up facebook photos to show them. Only now they say, "Why don't WE ever have fun things like that at OUR house?!" Because YOUR mommy is lazy--shut up, kid! I feel like I should adopt my children out during this time of year--just so they can have the experience of living with someone fun and organized for an amazing and exciting Halloween experience. You know--someone who actually DECORATES, does gift bags, makes orange and black baked goods, serves eyeballs and worms...someone who is not me. I don't know what my problem is really. I seem to be able to make an effort for Christmas, but that's all I have in me. One holiday. I would claim Easter as well, but I'm lucky if I throw a bunny or an egg on the window and we tend to use our palms from Palm Sunday to decorate. And by decorate, I mean throw strips of pulled-apart palm leaves around the floor. Happy Easter! Currently, my children can be distracted by and are mainly concerned with the candy of course, but that is because they don't know what they are missing. Eventually they will find out that I am a dud. Eventually they will learn that they can have candy AND fun. Hopefully by then they will be old enough to run it for me.