I love candy! I need more trick-or-treating!

I know what you're thinking. You're saying, "Britt, Halloween was on Wednesday. Seriously, what took you so long?" And I'll say, um, well . . . I don't have a good retort. But at least I'm telling you, right? And it's the whole story. Complete with (limited) illustration.

Overall, I believe it was quite successful. We began the day with my mom coming over to finish our costumes. (Not Katie's. She had hers ready and was practicing wearing it for about a week and a half before.) Mine was quite awesome.

Remember that whole thing about how I've having twins? Well, there is an enormous wealth of awesome things to do with Halloween when you're pregnant, but this is my one chance to wear something awesome that has to do with growing two babies. So, enter a bunch of felt and some tacky glue.

Yeah, I'm pretty cool. But my mom's costume was even cooler. We stuffed some nylons, stuck some velcro on her sweater, and dug through a spare magazine for makeup ads full of eyes and lips. And voila!

Meanwhile, Katie made a nest in Grandma's box full of batting. I wish we'd gotten a picture of that. She was tucked in with most of her stuffed animals and several novels I only acquired because of my English classes. But she also got Shelley's Frankenstein. That's Halloween-y, right?

Then we had to stick her in her chair for lunch, and she couldn't understand why she couldn't go to Grandma's house to go trick-or-treating right then. We had to promise that she could when Daddy got home from work. And then Grandma bribed her with jelly beans. Typical.

("These are tomatoes, Mommy. More beans, please?")

My mom had to leave to go take care of somebody's class Halloween party (yes, I do have a brother in 1st grade. I'm awesome like that) so Katie and I finished off the jelly beans by ourselves. It was difficult, but we managed. As soon as lunch was over, Katie insisted  that it was time to go trick-or-treating and proceeded to put on her costume, which she wore for the rest of the day. And still I did not take a picture.

MEANWHILE, AT A NOT-SO-DISTANT DOCTOR'S OFFICE . . .

Mike and I had spent the night before frantically trying to figure out what he should dress up as, because he was the only one who didn't have a costume planned out. And (surprise!) we couldn't think of anything. I think we could have if we'd kept trying, but he kind of chickened out. Well, when he got to work the next morning, other people had dressed up, and there was a costume contest. Rather than admit that he hadn't dressed up, he told his coworkers that he was a supermodel. Typical.

The best part though? He won. There was a tie, but he won the costume contest as a supermodel. This is ridiculous. Thanks, coworkers. Really appreciate it.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE HOME FRONT . . .

So nap time came, and I really couldn't sleep. (Seriously? Sleeping becomes medically necessary for me now and I lose my ability to do it? Seriously?) The Katie totally crashed though. Like, for a long time. I managed to sleep for, like, maybe half an hour, and then woke up to put some finishing touches on Katie's costume and to put on some dramatic Halloween makeup (or maybe any makeup at all.) Mike got home and Katie woke up and we all got dressed and Katie decided she wanted some dramatic Halloween makeup too. To her shock and amazement, I said yes just for Halloween, and put a minimal amount of glitter on her cheeks (leftover from my glittery teenage girl days) and drew a purple star on her cheek (to match the purple ribbon on her hat.) She was pretty adorable.

I had had a stroke of genius while Mike was at work (and he was NOT going to go trick-or-treating as a "supermodel"), so he was a sock monkey. It turned out pretty well for how last-minute it was, I think.

So we set off for Grandma's house (her neighborhood is much more lucrative than mine in the candy department) and I still did not take any pictures. Are you seeing a pattern in my intelligence level yet?

Immediately upon our arrival, Katie was swarmed by adoring fans . . . er, aunts and uncles. And they made her giggle, so I snapped a couple pictures with my phone (because I had realized my enormous mistake by this point.)

From here on out, the pictures are provided by my parents and their camera. They're dark and blurry because of all the Halloween-iness, and because I was a dunce and forgot my fancy camera that can deal with dark and blurry situations. But I am SO glad that somebody had the presence of mind to have a camera out. So there is evidence.

So Daddy and Abuelo took Katie and her uncles out trick-or-treating, and because I love to watch other people fawn over my adorable baby, I tagged along. Man, was it worth it. All the people who usually give you one or two (if you're lucky) were like, "Oh my gosh! She's so cute! Here, sweetheart, take as much as you want!" So she did. Mike actually had to pull her away from a few doors because the sweet old ladies weren't going to stop her from taking the entire bucket of candy.

My favorite story of the night? She had just trick-or-treated at someone's house, and was coming down their front steps holding my dad's hand, and her pumpkin bucket swung over her shoulder so she was holding it behind her, and she actually began to fall over backwards from the weight. The bucket of candy was heavier than the girl could carry. You know you've really scored when you can't even carry your bucket.

So the next time we saw my mom (she was roving in an actual vehicle for our transportation convenience) my dad emptied most of Katie's bucket into a bag so that she would still be able to carry it. She did not see him do this. She did not see the extra bag of candy. But when we got out of the car at a different part of the neighborhood and Abuelo gave her back her bucket, she noticed. She looked in the bucket, saw only a few pieces of candy, and got super mad. "Abuelo! Give it back!" Yeah, he was in a lot of trouble. Luckily, we managed to distract her by taking her to another house for more candy.

Well, we went at it for a while, saw a lot of other people we knew, got a huge 'ole bucket of loot, and stopped to go home when Mommy and Daddy were tired. Seriously, Katie could have gone all night. Come on, Mom. There's candy involved. We really have to stop?

So we went back to Grandma and Abuelo's house and evaluated the results of our evening. Katie did pretty well. But then she noticed that there was candy that could actually be eaten, and I don't think she let her mouth get empty of jelly beans for the rest of the night.

Well, after she did about 300 laps of Grandma's house, we decided it was time to attempt to go home for bed (mostly because Mommy was weeping from exhaustion and back pain.) We managed to get the witchy-poo and her candy out to the car and back home to bed, and oh man. That sugar crash sure did her in.

The next morning she didn't wake me up until 9:30 (Wonder of wonders! Miracle of miracles!) and then we had a super lazy day where I didn't wear makeup (um, surprise . . .) and we just kind of rested and played. And also Katie couldn't understand why I would think that she had to eat lunch before she could dig into her Halloween candy.

That night she got really mad when we said we weren't going back to Grandma's house to go trick-or-treating with Abuelo again. Come on, Mommy! I need more trick-or-treating!

Stay tuned for next week when I'm going to write another whole post about all the random funny things the Katie has taken to doing. I have a whole sticky-note list of them to remind myself. They're quite fantastic. But this post has already been way too long. So you're just going to have to wait.