Halloween comes early

As my oldest was born on Halloween almost seven years ago now, we like to go to town on what always was an essentially American holiday. He is lucky he was born when he was, back in my day you were lucky if you got to dunk for apples on Halloween. Now every house in our suburb has glowing Jack O'Lanterns grinning spookily from their porches, and glittering black tinsel dangling sparkling spiders draped across the door.

Every year we go trick or treating, another new invention imported from across the Pond, but one that I have grown to love as I will always associate it with my boy's birthday. I will never forget the year when we first took  his little brother. The sight of him wobbling off in his fat pumpkin suit, plastic bag in hand ready to his booty at each door was just adorable. And the grin on his face when he saw how many sweets he had amassed had to be seen to be believed.

As I am pretty sure my children don't read my blog - well certain in the case of three of them as they can't read - I will admit to binning the vast majority of sweets and then denying any knowledge of them when they asked about their whereabouts. Some mums opt for eating the sweets (for the good of their children, you understand). But as I  have spent the equivalent of at least two Caribbean holidays at the dentist replacing teeth already worn out by my own childhood sweetie habit, I feel it is best to rid the house of such temptation.

This year Halloween falls on a Sunday so I imagine the streets around our house will be filled with miniature vampires and ghouls begging for treats. I think it would totally flummox most of them if you asked for a trick. But I wouldn't try it with some of the misfit teenagers who knocked on the door last year - I wasn't even sure if their outfits were in fact fancy dress, or just what they wore to menace people on an everyday basis.

Courtesy of Tesco we will be well prepared for the birthday celebrations this year as they hosted a lovely event in London yesterday for a select few mummy bloggers (none of whose blogs I had ever heard of - blush - but I am sure they are brilliant and much more professional than my own little offering) to show off the new Halloween costumes and give a sneak preview of Monsters vs. Aliens: Mutant Pumpkins from Outer Space.

Both were a hit with the boys, as you can see from the pictures of my little bats (though I am not sure if the oldest looks more like a bat or part of a 70s glam rock tribute band), but the film was a particular success with son number two giving it a standing ovation at the end. We've already watched our DVD again today, and I can see I will be royally sick of it by the time Halloween comes around.