Halloween rules?

Last night was the first time we've taken Matthew trick or treating. Last year we were on an airplane during the TOT hours. This year Matthew's daycare had an event Tuesday afternoon - they called it "Trunk or Treat" and basically the parents parked with trunks open, candy ready, and the children went around the lot trick or treating. It was nice to get to see so many of the children in their costumes, and I think Matthew enjoyed it. Then last night we got them in their costumes again and went around to a few houses in our neighborhood. In our town we have pretty informal neighborhood associations, that plan occasional events, and it's strange to me, but the people who live across the street are a different association than we are. That's ok - they are still friendly when we see them out in their yards. One house has really beautiful grass so we asked them for advice on some areas of our lawn that needed work, you know, nice neighborly stuff.

So when we started out last night, the first 4 houses we went to were not passing out candy! WHAT? Who doesn't pass out candy on Halloween, yet stays home with their lights ON? Anyway, we noticed a lot of houses down one of the side streets were decorated so we decided to go to those. That worked out a lot better. Matthew got the hang of knocking on doors but he didn't understand he shouldn't go inside the house! He also wouldn't say "trick or treat" no matter how much I tried! He did however, say "tank you" to everyone, sometimes more than once! At one house the woman's cat was at the door and he started saying "kit cat" - so she thought he really liked the KitKat she gave him & gave him a handful more! He walked a lot more than I expected him to, only occasionally asking us to carry him.

As the evening went on, more and more people were just hanging out on their porches and got to be pretty talkative. At one house I felt like we were in the wrong neighborhood - when she found out we lived ACROSS the main street she talked about trick or treating on the streets BEHIND our house. I guess I need to learn the rules...you see, I grew up in the boonies and we had to DRIVE to TOT. There were no neighborhoods. We went to town and only went to houses where we knew the people - either from church or from them working with our parents. And yeah, we seriously drove from house to house. Since David & I have been married we've passed out candy to a lot of children we didn't know, so I know it's OK to go to a house where you don't know the people - but what are the boundaries? I mentioned to my mom before we went that I felt bad going to neighbors' houses when I don't know them, but she pointed out that I won't get to know them if I don't go, so I thought that was a good point and figured what the heck - I really just wanted Matthew to have fun - and he seemed to. He was dressed as a monkey and would make monkey sounds at people. He finally started saying "teat" when we went up to them too. So, he said "teat", made monkey sounds, said "tank you" and "bye". Occasionally if someone asked about Scarlett he would say "shish-ter....ye-ah" (ye-ah is how he says banana).

We got home and had some trick or treaters ourselves. The first people that came by appeared to be in their mid-twenties but they were dressed in great costumes and we were worried we had way too much candy, so we gave them 5 baggies each! David still ended up taking a lot of bags to work today!