See Mary Run: Trick or Treat!

   Yes, trick or treating starts early for our family. 

   The kids had the day off from school and since my husband didn't have to work til later in the day, we headed to the nearest big town to find the newest location of our favorite pizza chain, CiCi's.  This place is awesome -- $4.99 buffet (adults), $2.99 (kids) for salad, pizza, breadsticks, cinnamon rolls, brownies and more.  Plus they have over 30 varieties of pizza with at least 10 on the buffet at any given time.  And you can make requests!  Some of our favorites are the buffalo chicken pizza and the spinach ricotta pizza.  Before this opened up we had to go as far as Orlando to enjoy this. 

   After lunch we came back to relax at home and enjoy our day off.  My boss tries to give us school holidays off -- this was instead of Columbus Day this year.  (Don't ask me why the schools did this, but hey I'll take it.)  Hubby headed off to work and I started getting the kids ready for the first round of trick or treating.  The local old folks home has an annual event where the residents sit in the halls and the kids go past.  Each resident has a helper, and the kids come out with a pumpkin or bag loaded with candy.  I mean, it's to the point that I've learned to take an extra bag with me just in case there's no more room in someone's pumpkin before we're through!

   I also saw a sign on the side of the road yesterday advertising a local church Fall Fair.  We had no idea where this was, but I knew the general location.  I ended up driving in circles for 10 minutes until we finally made to the right backwoods country road.  LOL.  I had told the kids that if this meant paying for stuff, we would take a look around and then head on home.  Most of the local churches hold these things as free to the public to promote membership, but some will charge for some or all of the festival.  We have a tight budget and when we got there, there was a lot of chaos.  No signs up that I could see until we'd been there about 10 minutes and no one to direct newcomers around.  It looked like you could just get in line and participate but the lines weren't short.  I tried to find someone to ask and saw a teeny sign telling you to go inside to buy armbands, food tickets, etc.  I had to take the disappointed kids back on home without getting to play.  We'd already had some McD's fries and sodas after dinner at home for a treat.  And we stopped by Daddy's work to show off the costumes for a few minutes.

   So it was a full day.  There's another church thingy tomorrow night but I'm going to call first!  And I think that will do it until the actual big night next week.  I think we already have enough loot to get us through til next year . . . .   With 4 kids, we let them enjoy their own individual stash for about a week, then dump it all into a communal tub they can pick through.  They don't gorge on the stuff because it's never a forbidden thing -- in fact they rarely eat much candy except for this time of year.

   Mommy's tired.  The kids are asleep, and I'm ready to relax awhile.  Tomorrow is going to be a busy day too.  Whew.