Entries (RSS)Halloween was interesting this year. We went through an absolute ton of candy, and we weren’t even here the whole night. This was, however, the first year we didn’t run out of candy.
See, our neighborhood gets a lot of trick-or-treaters. We’re a safe neighborhood just up the hill from a not quite as safe and logistically unfriendly neighborhood for trick-or-treating. By logistically unfriendly, I mean not a lot of street lights, no sidewalks and not much shoulder on a decently busy road.
I’ve lived in this house for 6 years now, but moving in just before Halloween, I’ve now been through 7 Halloweens, and it’s been a madhouse every year. The first year I was only home for a few minutes between work and other plans, and it was early in the night, so I didn’t see a lot of kids. I had no clue what I was really in for here.
The second year, my parents were visiting, so we got what we thought was a normal amount of candy, but very quickly realized the amount of kids that showed up and were quickly out. Even though the outside lights were off, because we’re under a streetlight and we did have lights on in the house, kids kept ringing the doorbell. We eventually had to put a sign up saying “Sorry, we’re out of candy” because the doorbell was ringing every couple minutes and we couldn’t even eat dinner.
The third and fourth years, Mr. B was here. We loaded up on candy and figured we had enough, but both years I ended up running to the store about 6:30-7 in order to buy more candy cause we were almost out, Mr. B seems to relish giving out candy and doesn’t want to turn off the lights, and we’d still get kids ringing the doorbell and making us feel bad that we didn’t have any candy left.
Two years ago, it was me and my dad, who had been living with me for a bit while he and Mom were attempting to move back to the area. Mr. B was in class that night and missed out on it all. Dad wasn’t feeling good and just stopped to pick us up some McDonald’s since cooking dinner doesn’t work out so well. I barely got a chance to eat, though luckily I thought ahead and just got a salad so my food wasn’t sitting there getting cold. But I was basically answering the door all night while he tried to sleep. I think we ran out of candy about 7ish.
Last year, Mr. B and I were well prepared, but tt was really crazy year. As cold as it was, everyone was driving kids around, so our normally quiet street was lined with parked cars and had a slow procession of cars driving through it. I think we just barely made it through the entire night with candy, but we started getting pretty stingy with how much was given out so we could make it through. We generally like to give the kids a couple pieces of candy – more if it’s just the little gum and jawbreaker type. This particular year, we started giving everyone one item for the bigger stuff, two for the little and still barely made it.
This year, we made sure we were going to have enough. We went to the store and were pulling one of everything off the shelves, two if it was a 2-for-something without another matching one. We ended up with the following pile of candy, which went straight into a tub downstairs to be hidden until Halloween.
- 40 oz Wonka Mixups variety pack (2)
- 35 oz Farm & Fleet Kiddie Treats (2) – the generic gum, jawbreakers, etc. mix
- 26 oz Tootsie Roll mix
- 13.3 oz Skittles fun size
- 13.3 oz Starburst fun size
- 12.5 oz 100 Grand fun size
- 11.5 oz Nestle Crunch fun size
- 11.5 oz Heath snack size
- 11.4 oz Caramel Twix fun size
- 11.18 oz Snickers fun size
- 11 oz Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup miniatures
- 10.78 oz Mr. Goodbar snack size
- 10.5 oz Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups snack size
- 10.5 oz Mike and Ike (2)
- 10.29 oz KitKat
- 10 oz Sweetarts
That’s 19 bags of candy totaling 334.25 oz, or approximately 20.9 lbs, sitting in a 12 gallon tub.
I actually got a little worried about having too much this year. Just after we went to the store and bought all this candy, some friends suggested going to see a new movie on Halloween as this was about the only time we could get everyone together. Everyone went along with going to a later dinner and movie so that we’d be able to get rid of some of this candy instead of having it around the house for next Halloween.
When I first got home from work, I was a little nervous. It was already close to 6 and Mr. B said he had really just started seeing kids about 15 min before, and it wasn’t that busy. We were planning on leaving around 7, so I was afraid this was going to be the one year we had a ton of candy, but no kids. Shortly after I got home though, the crowds picked up with the normal steady stream of kids between 6:30 and 7.
It was nice enough we just sat on the front steps all night and saw a lot more costumes since they weren’t all covered up by winter coats. It was kind of nice. And we actually had plenty of candy so we were giving a couple each, but we still had way more than we needed for missing the last hour, so by about 6:30 we were giving out small handfuls of candy.
Just before 7, I started getting the dogs back inside and in their kennels and the lights turned off so we could get going. Our neighbor stopped by for a few min. She had just moved in this year and hadn’t realized what a madhouse it is around here, so she ran out of candy early. We hadn’t really seen her a lot in the recent weeks to warn her. She said she and her family normally keep track of how many kids they get as a little contest and here she wasn’t even able to keep track.
At that point, it was time to go, but we still had a steady stream of kids and didn’t get another break until about 7:10, so we quickly turned off the lights and threw the candy inside and ducked out while we could.
So, what do we have left of all that candy? A decent sized bowl full. I got an estimated weight on the bathroom scale. Seems we have around 2.5 lbs left.
If the weather is supposed to be somewhat nice again next year, we’re thinking of having a front yard party and inviting a bunch of friends to hang out and eat sandwiches and snacks in the front yard while the kids are all around. Would be a good time, if anyone wanted to do it. We tried to get that set up for this year as the pre-movie activities, but it didn’t really come together.
