Halloween/Monster Party

Since we had already had a successful trunk-or-treat experience, I wanted to do something a little different for Halloween.  It was on a school night, and the last thing the kids needed was more candy.  We decided to have a Monster Party.  The new movie Monster University had just come out so we decided to base our party around that.  We had fun monster themed food like monster teeth and ears (doritos and potato chips), and noses and eyes (strawberries, raspberries, and grapes), and monster smiles(crescent roll up sandwiches).  We even had themed drinks and huge monster cupcakes from Costco.  The plan was to have dinner, go around the neighborhood for a few minutes to trick-or treat, and then come home and watch the movie.  Brad said he would take the kids out while I stayed home and passed out candy.  After about an hour I was getting a little worried as to why they weren't back yet.  They finally came home and said that they had run in to some friends in the neighborhood and had decided to stay out longer with them and trick or treat to a few more houses.  At this point it was too late to watch the whole movie, so we opted for the first 1/2 hour while eating cupcakes and sorting candy from their trick or treat buckets.  Sadie even went so far as to grab a notebook and "inventory" her loot.  It was a fun Halloween night!  A couple of days later, I noticed a tent that was set up collecting Halloween candy to send to military men and women.  I was itching to whittle down our supply of sugar, so I proposed the idea to the kids.  At first they weren't crazy about it, but I explained that it would go to people like their Uncle Matt who were serving our country.  I told them if they wanted, they could pick 15 pieces of candy to keep and then dump the rest in a bag and we would take it to the collection spot.  After my speech, everyone was on board.  Sadie and Drew came with me to deliver the candy and even got to make thank you cards to send with it.  It was a great way to show
appreciation to the troops.