Happy Halloween

One of the challenges with holidays seems to be finding that balance between fun and overwhelming. You want to build traditions for your family, but you don't want to rush from one thing to another, leaving everyone crabby and wishing for some down time. Thankfully, I think we've found the key to keeping Halloween just about right.

For the second year, we hosted a Halloween open house for our families. Rather than spending two hours driving our kids to three houses to visit grandparents and aunt/uncles, we bring them to us. I cooked up a delicious Jamaican Pumpkin soup, put on the coffee and baked up some muffins. The kids stuffed themselves with candy and ran around the house with their cousin, excited to have all of their family together. As soon as everyone left for home, we walked up and down our street trick-or-treating at the neighbors'. Back at home, they changed into PJs, sorted through candy and passed out treats to trick-or-treaters.

No crying, fussy, complaining, whining or fighting.

And the kids were good too.

This is definitely a holiday tradition worth keeping.