Halloween

This Halloween will not go down as our best, but not just because the weather was miserable.  Usually on Halloween Jeff takes the boys around our sparsely lit neighborhood on the golf cart and I stay in to hand out candy.  Due to the weather and also decreasing numbers of trick or treaters on our street last year, we decided we would instead take the boys to a church near by for a trunk or treat.  We had a trunk or treat at our church a few days before so we thought they would be into it.  Sam was happy to be there, looking good in his ninja turtle outfit.  Casey had a rough time.  Partly, I think, because he really likes "what we have always done" (a good Methodist in the making), and partly because he never really settled on a costume.  We bought costumes earlier than usual this year and we were surprised that Casey selected another ninja costume.  After that purchase he changed his mind.  While we were happy to help him piece something else together, we told him we were not spending more money on it.  By the time Halloween arrived he had sort of settled on a hand me down Scooby Doo costume.  But he didn't like how the head/hood part felt.  But you have to put up the hood to be able to put on the collar which is sort of the whole point of the costume.  Anyway, there we were in the parking lot of this other

church and he is refusing to wear the whole costume.  We told him he needed to wear it, but instead he opted to stay in the car.  So we let him.  One of us stayed near by, but he stayed in the car the whole time, he even took the entire costume off in protest.  When we left the church we stopped at a few houses of people we knew and he sort of cooperated.  When we got back onto our street, Sam wanted to go to a few houses that had their lights on, but Casey refused to put the whole costume on again.  He was just being difficult, he was mad it was raining, mad about his costume, mad at us.  When we got home, he went straight to his room and got into bed.  Remarkably neither Jeff or I had lost our temper during this bizarre behavior.  I mean, its Halloween, but why would you force a kid to collect candy?  We gave him choices and he made decisions that ruined his evening and thats fine.  His move straight to bed made us wonder if he was getting sick or something, but once the pizza showed up and there was a fun Halloween movie on, he perked right up and rejoined the family.  So what are you gonna do?  He recovered fine and we all moved on.  Better luck next year!