1. This year I got to go trick-or-treating again. It's been quite a while, but when you have a kid, the fun starts up again. Ellie and I roamed the streets while Shelly manned the candy bowl at home, and then we traded places. When we first started trick-or-treating, Ellie didn't really have much of an idea what was going on. But after a while she caught on. She realized that people were holding out bowls of colorful, small objects that she could pick up and drop into the sack Daddy was holding out for her. It quickly became an obsession. She'd see a candy bowl and reach for it excitedly. Not because she wanted candy, of course (that's for me and Shelly to eat!), but because it's fun to pick it up and put it into a bag. She was so excited to do it (and so cute at doing it) sometimes that a few people let her take three or four pieces of candy! We took her home and put her on the living room floor with our bowl of candy, and she grabbed it, piece by piece, and set it in a pile on her other side, very neatly. When it was time for bed, she howled. Just wait till next year when we let her eat her own candy.

2. The only trick-or-treating experience I've had previously was in my neighborhood growing up in Salt Lake City. It didn't really happen when I was in school in Provo, or living in an apartment in Crystal City, VA or Cambridge, MA. Last year, while we were living in this house in this nice suburban Alexandria neighborhood, I had to work till about 10:00 on Halloween 2005 (one of the low points of my life), so I missed everything. And I found that trick-or-treating in a townhouse subdivision is different--and way better--than trick-or-treating in a Utah neighborhood of spaced-out houses with big yards.

As a kid, trick-or-treating meant getting together a group of friends and/or family and going house-to-house. You really only connected with the kids you were with, and there was a hike between each house, down the driveway, down the street, up the driveway of the next house, knock on the door, etc. Around here, though, the houses and front doors are right next to each other. So not only can you hit way more houses in a shorter amount of time, but the streets just come alive. you can see all the other kids all around, all the people handing out candy come sit out on the porch and chat with each other. You see a kid you know two houses down and yell out a compliment about his costume. It's a very community-oriented feel, where it wasn't just kids collecting candy like a chore, but a special night when everyone comes out to have fun. It felt more like a block party than anything else. I loved it.

3. You know how as a trick-or-treater, you're supposed to only take pre-wrapped industrially produced candy? Snickers are OK; popcorn balls are death traps. I got to wondering whether those "rules" came about as a public relations campaign sponsored by the commercial candy industry. I mean, really. How often does some sicko lace his candy with arsenic? Has anyone actually heard of it happening? I'm sure you're more likely to be hit by a car while trick-or-treating than to die of nefarious candy poisoning. (And if someone really wanted to kill off trick-or-treaters, you think he couldn't make his Snickers bars deadly, too?) It had to be the candy industry's doing. I can see the representatives from Hershey, Nestle, Willie Wonka, and Mars getting together to conspire against trick-or-treaters. This is a big day for candy, and they don't want any homemade stuff intruding on their territory. Think of the lost sales!

4. Does anyone ever even see Milk Duds except for at Halloween?