It's Halloween o'Clock

The way Mila sees it, Halloween is a month-long event, not just a day. She wakes up October 1st ready to start very serious training for the candy marathon that will come at the end.

She's DEEP into her training plan right now.

Mila has multiple costumes figured out, because of course, and she has already managed to trick-or-treat once. It was a "little" bit of trick-or-treating. You've got to ramp up for the big day, you know?

The fun part about that "little" bit of trick-or-treating was that it really shouldn't have happened.

There is an annual fall festival thing near-ish to our house. It involves trunk-or-treating in the parking lot and then activities inside a big building. It's generally a mess of people and terribly crowded and basically, it's a really dumb idea to go. So I do every year.

This year, the weather was beautiful and perfect in the hours leading up to the event. Then, at the EXACT moment that I piled two costumed girls into the car, it started to rain. By the time we made it to the magical candy-filled parking lot, it was POURING. As in, people who were outside walking were losing their umbrellas to the wind and it didn't matter because it was raining sideways and they were soaked anyway.

Mila is scared of that particular brand of heavy rain.

We sat in the car for a full five minutes with her going back and forth between being too scared to get out of the car and OMG THE CANDY IS RIGHT THERE. I didn't particularly want to go stand out in the rain, so I finally offered her a trip to the candy store (aka Five Below because that's how I roll) instead.

She pondered it.

She decided to overcome the rain and trunk-or-treat like she had planned.

The good news was that in the time Mila spent arguing with herself, the trunk-or-treating managed to move indoors. The even better news is that Alexis saw someone she knew and we were able to mosey up to the front of the line. But the bad news? The bad news was that *I* got soaked because the two costumed kids managed to steal my umbrella and leave me in the rain.

But, hey. At least I scored a costume out of the deal. I always wanted to be an annoyed, frazzled mom impersonating a drowned rat.