about 50 so far, and we only have 20 minutes left to go. We use to get lots more, but now we are the only house on the street with porch light on we get fewer DD and boyfriend are handing out candy. I do little sized candy, most of our treaters are under 5 years old. We have had a zebra, and elephant, and a giraffe. The kids that use to live in the neighborhood come back with their kids.

We don't get any. We're out of the way in a cul-de-sac, mostly retired folk in our section.

Our trick-or-treating was friday night..:^( It should always be on Halloween. Oh well. It poured down rain, the kids lasted an hour but got enough candy as everyone felt sorry for the trick-or-treaters and didn't want to be stuck with leftover candy.

OK, it picked up... 30 bars left, so that means we've had 90... or 88, since I gave a couple fairy princesses two each... We've got a half hour to go, so my estimates weren't completely off...

7 candy bars left and the porch lights are out. It took a while, but a couple kids finally did figure out why I carved the Greek letter Pi into my Jack-o-lantern...

Izzy had the wind knocked out of her sails because instead of letting her jump all over everyone, I made her wear maribou-trimmed pink bunny ears and sit when the doorbell rang.

My old neighborhood at the beach, no kids. My new neighborhood I was told 3 tops. It about tripled - great kids. Encouraging turnout. I did 3 Muskateers and Tootsie Rolls.

Full size candy bars, Michelle? Your fairy princesses will will be losing their fairy figures in no time:)

They're all up & down the streets here-
I had to show houses tonight, but my neighbors are all "in the spirit", & there were a million little goblins & ballerinas on the street when I came back home.

My neighbor gets over 100 every year, & now she's getting the children of the ones who came to her door when she first moved here.

It's after 8:00 and we have zero so far. Disappointing.

To my knowledge there are five children on my street.My street is a long one. There are always children from other nearby streets. But there are always pickup trucks and vans that show up every year. I don't know where they are from. Tonight a boy from one of these groups looked at my basket of Smarties and looked me in the eye and said"Is that it?"
Acouple of groups later another boy looked at the basket and gave me a thumbs up sign and said "Good choice".Ended the evening on a better note for me.

We always referred to the night children go door to door for candy as 'beggar's night'. It didn't always fall exactly on Halloween, either. I have just found out that this may be a regional thing. My parent's also never allowed us to use the phrase trick or treat. We would have to say "this is the beggar's night, we've come to beg a bite. Nobody looked at us strangely, though some thought we had to perform to get a treat.

I suppose kids today would be offended at our loot, much of which were things like home made popcorn balls or those bland yellow apples. I'd suspect half of the candy we got were tootsie rolls. One particularly successful night, my sister and I both filled two paper grocery bags before we had to call it a day. Nobody put a time limit on the excursions, but common sense told us not to answer doors to beggars after ten o'clock. Mischief was rampant, and people usually got windows soaped whether they gave out treats or not.

The driveway down to our house is 750' long. No street lights. I think most of the kids get "spooked" before they make it to our place. Steve in Baltimore County.

We never have very many, one of two streets off a road out in the country. DH always buys way too much candy (3 bags) and I give everyone one of each but last night no kids at all! Sigh!! We watched Young Frankenstein to celebrate. What a Hoot!! I guess I'll have to eat all of those snickers and reeses cups myself. If there are any left on Sat. I'm sure DS will help me out. When I was a kid Halloween was a bigger deal. There was soaping windows, and corning, and toilet paper, and moving outhouses and getting shot at with rock salt, ah the good old days!

We used to have 50 or 60 kids just from the neighborhood; -it's a double cul-de-sac, the entrances serve only the residents. Then cars from other areas began coming by and dropping off 6 or 8 kids at a time. The neighborhood had a meeting for folks to vent - we'd had over 300 kids and at that time there were only 5 who actually lived in "our" area. There were also numerous mailboxes bashed, car antennas broken, and trash thrown around -- that isn't "tricking", that's vandalism. The neighborhood went "dark" the following year, with only the known children going to pre-arranged houses during a half-hour period.

Last night we had seven littl'uns come by. One actually had a homemade costume. I just had to give her extra candy.

Hey, maybe they all grew up! I never did but I am too big to go. Steve in Baltimore.

calliope when I was a little girl in Chicago we never said Trick or Treat either. We'd say "Do you have something for a little begger?" nice to know we weren't the only ones. Our costumes usually were homemade with a store bought mask. In our neighborhood the school would have a huge bonfire for the whole neighborhood. we'd march around it then into the playground "warming house" to get a brown bag with popcorn and an apple and a few pieces of candy. Then we'd all march down to the local Sears Roebuck (about a block or two away)and parade through the store. I think it was all over by 9 P.M. We had a great school system in those days. Each school had a supervised playground and many activities.

Oh, and we had abuot 8 kids but only 3 little ones last night

We just had an article in our paper here about some local teens who refuse to give up Trick-or-Treating. Still doing it at 14-18 years old.

I don't know what I'd do if someone that old came to my door! Yes it's fun, but that's pushing it.

We just moved into our house in August, so I didn't know how the trick or treating would be in the new neighborhood. Well, I was really surprised when we closed the door at 9:15 and added up our count (me and my mom and aunts always keep track) and it was 175!!! I couldn't believe it. We had them almost non-stop from 5:45pm - 9:15pm.

I think a lot of parents grew concerned with the danger of children out roaming after dark, combined with not knowing the neighbrs in many cases. Some of the malls here have parties and contests/games, plus most elementary schools have planned activities.

When my son was small it was still considered safe plus his instructions were to go only to the houses of his friends in the neighborhood. Although one year an elderly couple said their feelings were hurt when the crowd of kids passed them by...LOL...and they chased them down the street offering candy.

But times changed. In recent years before we moved there were cars full of older teens not even in costume coming by who we didn't recognize. They would take double handsful... I stopped offering the basket of candy and doled out one piece each...of the miniature bars! To be honest I was afraid of the "tricks" they might do to our cars or property. And it was worse in some neighborhoods with serious vandalism.

I suppose it's best in a supervised lighted gym or mall but some of the fun has gone out of it. I can stll remember the heartstopping fright of older kids scaring us wee ones when I was small and then the happy relief of recognizing a neighbor kid's voice behind the mask. Which was what it was all about. josh

At my old house in the city, there weren't all that many kids, and our house was kind of scary with the creaking iron gate, dark sidewalk and all, so we only got kids we knew.

A few years later, I'm in a neighborhood abutting the city, where there are lots of kids, and lots of people from surrounding communities drive their kids in en masse. There's no way I could possibly count the trick or treaters, but I would guess 300 easy. Kind of tiring and a little expensive. The early ones are cute. The ones who show up after our city's official trick-or-treat curfews, some being teenage boys not really wearing costumes, are not so very cute. One asked if he could exchange whatever it was I dropped into his basket. I said he could, and he promptly helped himself to about four additional items.

The best thing I saw were two little spidermen, in identical costumes with big padded "muscle" torsos, walking down the sidewalk hand in hand.

The older kids who don't bother to even TRY to be in costume only get 1 tootsie roll from me. If they have a younger kid with them, I'll usually give them a break though. But, when a group of kids come to the door who are all a foot taller than me and are wearing jeans and a t-shirt, carrying a pillow case for their candy?... they get the single tootsie roll.

Now, if they're a bit old for it, but are still in the spirit and dressing up, I don't mind that so much. I probably went trick or treating myself, for a few too many years. lol But I always had elaborate costumes that my mom had made and it was fun.

I'd never dream of letting my 15 year old go door to door not even dressed up! I'd be embarassed.

Tuesday night I went with two friends and their children to the Story Book Forest Trail at one of our local lakes. The idea was actually very cute, the kids went down the forest trail and each stop was a scene from a children's tale, The Three Little Pigs, Little Miss Muffet, Sleeping Beauty, ect. Obviously it was aimed at the young set :), but after that was an area with games, a hayride and then we finished up with roasting marshmallows and/or hotdogs over a fire. We really enjoyed it.

This was the third hayride of the season :) We took the kids a couple of weeks ago to the local Pumpkin Patch, which is actually more of a carnival on a horse farm, complete with a petting zoo, kettle corn, horse rides, bumper cars, a hayride and an actual pumpkin patch!

Our second hayride was at a friend's house. The family puts together a hayride/hot dog roast for the 3rd -6th graders at our church, and the rest of us tag along and pretend we are that age. :)

When I was growing up we lived out in the country. The houses were too far apart for our parents to let us walk from house to house, so our local dairy farmer would put together a hayride and take us from house to house. Unfortunately in Colorado, Halloween seems to be a perfect day for snow, so I don't remember actually getting to go very many times :) But I DO remember the matching clown outfits my mother made for my sister and I when I was a little tot. They were very cute, and I wore them for a long time since my sister was five years older! :)

Lisa

We're in a small sub-division out in the country, so we only get the kids who live in the neighborhood. This seems to wax & wane with the kids' ages. This year we've had several new families move into the neighborhood, so we had about 20 kids.

Ans Minnie, I grew up in Chicago & we never said "I'm a little beggar." We always said "Trick or Treat." And what we really loved s to go trick or treating in the apartments near our house. There were always a few single men who never seemed to realize it was Halloween & would end up giving us spare change. That was the biggest treat of all.