Since when did Halloween take over Christmas as the busiest holiday?

Halloween has always been a fun holiday. When I was young it meant we'd throw together some costume, mostly from play clothes or items borrowed from neighbors, and then wear it to school on Halloween and then go trick-or-treating in the evening. Growing up it diminished in my life... mostly thanks to my mom, who would bribe me with legos to stay home and hand out treats. In college, it was even more pathetic. Several years I spent Halloween evening at the BYU testing center, taking exams for some chemistry or math class.

Well, I'm happy to say its importance has resurged in my life.. but I think it's resurged too much. We ended up going to FIVE parties for our kids over Halloween weekend, plus trick or treating.

1. Friday, Oct 28th: Livy's school had a Harvest festival:

 2. Friday, Oct 28th: Mesa housing had their annual Halloween party (geared to students with children) right next to our place, so there was no dodging it...

3. Saturday, Oct 29th: Halloween Spookacular at Sea World

4. Saturday, Oct 29th: Trunk or treat... All of the congregations that meet at our church building got together and threw a Halloween party, complete with trick or treating from the trunks of the cars in the parking lot.

5. Monday, Oct 31st: Halloween parade and party at Anabelle's school. I attended this, but unfortunately forgot to put new batteries in the camera... whoops...

6. Monday, Oct 31st: Trick or treating. Livy had a blast, as did Anabelle. However, Anabelle noted at the end, "That was fun, but not too fun... I didn't like having to walk around so much to get candy... I just want people to give it to me".

After all of this, I feel like I've crammed in a few years of Halloweens into one weekend. For some reason, though, I have the suspicion that even though I think we'll probably still have some of Anabelle's Halloween candy left come next Halloween, we'll have to go through this all again.

Note to parents: Candy is sacred territory for kids. One of the late night guys suggested that parents tell their kids they ate their candy and then post the videos to YouTube (click here to watch). I showed the videos to Anabelle, and all she said was "I can't believe that mean man told parents to do that! I mean, how many kids cried?! That was mean of the parents too! Daddy, you would never do that right?" In the back of my mind the guilt swept over, as I had dumped 90% of Livy's candy and 60% of Anabelle's candy off at work the day before.