It's damp and a little chilly in the Chicago area, but with my mom's help I did manage to take the boys out for a bit of trick-or-treating. Here they are:

(I like them. I think I'll keep 'em.)

I have to say I'm incredibly impressed with how family-friendly Evanston is. There were tons of families outside, and we ran into several kids Jacob knows from school. (He loved getting to go house-to-house with at least one boy from his class.) It was almost sad to me how nonchalant the other kids are about having friends in the neighborhood; for Jake, it's such a novelty. 

It's really dark in my neighborhood -- I think wealthy homeowners don't like bright streetlights or something -- but lots of people, like me, had flashlights, and the police were even slowly patrolling the streets with their flashers on. Just announcing their presence, I guess. But it made me feel safer to know they were there, if only because there wouldn't be speeders flying down the streets with so many police around.

What kept cracking me up was that Jake told the first half of the people giving candy that he was allergic to peanuts. Like they care, kiddo! I finally broke him of that habit, and he switched to seriously informing people that he wasn't a real firefighter, just a boy wearing a costume. Oh, that child.

By the time we got home, the kids were totally drained (and so was their mom). My mom stayed with them while I put the wagon in the basement, and then I dragged them upstairs. I bribed them into washing up and changing into jammies by promising I'd examine their candy while they did it. That bought me enough time to feed the cats, change my clothes, and put identical bowls of candy together with some Ovaltine. They each got two mini boxes of Dots, a Kit-Kat, and half of a Hershey bar -- I figured that was enough for one night. I still have to go through and pull out all the stuff with broken wrappers and anything with nuts. Then, my goal is to create two identical bags of treats to use for bribes/rewards for a while.

Thank G-d they're still young enough to control this way...