HalloWeiners!

I am a little nauseated right now... that is what happens when you spend the day eating all the candy the kids didn't like out of their trick or treating bag. That can really add up when you have four kids! It doesn't help that it is fast Sunday so I fasted all morning and afternoon and then went straight for the candy. Uggghhh.

Well another Halloween has come and gone. This year proved to be quite eventful... in a not so good way.

The night started off absolutely fabulous! For the first year... like ever... Nate took the girls out trick or treating by himself (the boys went out with friends). I got to hand out the candy. I was really excited until I found out it wasn't really all that fun. I guess it was better than freezing while the kids walked door to door, but 100 little dressed up kiddos... well it just got kind of boring after the 4th Harry Potter and the 20th fairy (which seemed to be THE costume to wear this year).

My mom and dad stopped by for a while. All seemed to be going well... Seth (who seemed to accomplish avoiding the camera all night) didn't seem to have all that great of a time with his friends and came home with a smaller bag of candy than the girls. James spent the first hour running around the front yard scaring the little trick or treaters, which he found quite amusing. He got bored of that when he got a big hole in the bottom of his foot by scraping a large portion of skin off it from running around the yard barefooted while trying to scare all the little kids. After a while he finally decided to go out trick or treating alone as "a boy who wants candy". At the time I wasn't sad to see him go.

The three younger kids finally finished up and we went off to bed with their bags of candy. I was expecting James home any second... I loaded up on my NyQuil so I could get some sleep with my stuffy nose. And laid down in bed assuming I would hear James when he came it. I woke up in a drug induced state around 12:05 AM and realized the lights I had left on for James were still on downstairs. I went into James's room where it was pretty obvious he had not been home yet. I of course freaked out because last I had seen him he didn't seem to have a buddy system in place. He was running around the neighborhood all by his lonesome wreaking havoc.

I got in my car and drove around the neighborhood (I felt like I was driving impaired), but I didn't see a single person walking around. I went next door to see if him and B-bad (seen in the picture with James above) had somehow met back up later in the evening... Nope. B-bad was out cold in bed like a good teenager. Lucky me for having a naught one!

The neighbor and Nate got out of bed (Nate did it very grudgingly) and took off around the neighborhood to find James. I waited at home wondering if I should start making midnight phone calls... and who would I even call?

About a minute later the child walks through the door. When asked where he had been till twelve thirty he replied "trick or treating".

I was so thrilled to see that he was ok, but still mad that he was stupid.... I was sitting there in a drug induced, relieved, tired, but furious state and I thought the safest thing was to just send him to bed and deal with the whole situation in the morning. So that is what I did... I told him there was no way I believed he was trick or treating until 12:30 in the morning and if he was then I was going to get a lot of angry phone calls from the people he was trick or treating at... but that I thought he was a big fat liar and I would give him the night to come up with a better reason for being out late... and that hopefully it was the honest one... and then I sent him to bed.

I called Nate who had already been notified by the neighbor who had seen James being dropped off, that he was home. And once he was back we went to bed. I of course just sat there and thought about what the heck the child was doing at 12:30 that he would lie about. Somewhere in there I got tired of thinking about it and drifted off to sleep.

WELL TODAY

He is claiming that he met up with some kids in a subdivision and he ended up at a high school party all night until one of the kids cousins brought him home. I asked him if this "said" party had a telephone. He said probably but that he thought we would make him come home. He does have brains! He just chooses not to use them most of the time. Great to know!

He stood up and bore his testimony in sacrament (which Nate missed playing hooky cause he was to tired to go to church after the ordeal from the night before... yeah right)... James said he was thankful for his "over protective mother"....he trying to win brownie points or something? I had to sit him down and explain that most parents would freak out if their kids didn't come home at night when they were suppose to...

So all in all I now have a grounded teenager who is going to follow me around for the next week whining how bored he is, but I have to look at the bright side. He is alive and healthy and next week when he is ungrounded he can do this to me all over again!!