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I didn't really say much about Henry's Halloween experiences did I? Allow me to rectify that situation poste haste.

On Tuesday we took Henry to the mall for their trick-or-treating night. This is a mall that I've been to many times, at many different times of the year, many different times of the week and day, and never have I seen more than twenty shoppers wandering around, each of them no doubt wondering how a mall with so many stores in it could possibly not have any shops worth going into (with the exception of Victoria's Secret and Old Navy, but Old Navy is less than a year old so we were entirely without for a really long time.) Naturally I assumed that no one would be there for tricks-or-treats either, but wow, was I wrong. There were throngs of kids and families, all lined up single file, waiting for six o'clock to hit, at which point everyone started to shuffle in a big slow-moving circle around the mall, getting candy from employees who were stationed outside each store. It was the strangest thing I'd ever seen. It also didn't seem like the ideal way to spend the next twelve hours because that's how long I calculated it would take us to make the circuit considering how slowly the line was moving. We had decided to give it five more minutes when a girl in costume came careening through Sears with a shopping cart full of candy and started dishing out heaping handfuls into kids' eagerly awaiting treat bags. Dave took Henry over and on the way back, Henry peered into his pumpkin, stuck his hand in, pulled out a mini-Hershey bar, and then decisively said "This one!" Dave and I declared the evening a success, and immediately headed over to Wok Express for some delicious mall Chinese food. (No, really, it's pretty good!) We got some interesting looks from the families who overheard us decide to leave. I don't think they could believe we were throwing in the towel when there were people at the mall willing to give us candy! for free! whereas Dave and I felt like this was the last year before Henry gets caught up in trying to get as much candy as possible. We decided to take advantage of it.

On the actual evening of Halloween, Megan, Megan's mom, and Leo came over so we could go to a couple of neighbor's houses, ostensibly for candy, but mainly to show off how cute our kids were. Henry really didn't seem to care much about the candy after the first house. He was of the opinion that since he already had some, why bother knocking on anyone else's door? By far his favorite house was our neighbor Howard down the street whose wife is out of town. He was blasting the blues and cooking up indian food. While we chatted outside, Henry kept peering around the front door trying to figure out where the drum set was; he could hear it, he just couldn't see it. Howard doesn't know it, but Henry would have gladly sat on the couch to chat about music with him over some Chicken Tikka Masala. He may have even been willing to share the juice box Howard gave him, which is saying a lot for a two year old.