The girls wanted to have a Halloween party this year, and we thought it would be fun to have a sort of open house style thing where we had hot chocolate and snacks and a fire in the back yard.  The girls’ friends could come hang out and they could trick or treat in the neighborhood and do party stuff.  I didn’t plan any party games, but let’s pretend I did and they were called “Talk About Boys” and “Roll Your Eyes At Your Mother” and they thought those were the best games ever.

Sophie had a few friends coming over, Willow had two.  Alex invited five or six, and Nate was all Uh, Mom?  Really?  (But then brought one of his friends home with him around 8:30.)  So we all cleaned up, and put up some decorations.  I roasted a couple of sugar pumpkins and made pumpkin soup and roasted pumpkin seeds.  John got a ton of candy and milk for hot chocolate and about five hundred mini croissants to make little sandwiches with.  I washed and ironed the Halloween tablecloth, got some flowers, made a cake, put some mulled wine on the stove and the Pandora Halloween party station on the little kitchen i-player dealio.  Sophie made a bunch of paper pumpkins and ghosts and put some in her bedroom window and used others to make a garland for the kitchen.  It was fun, mostly, since we haven’t done a whole lot of entertaining since we moved in.

Sophie’s friends arrived and were gone with another mom in less than five minutes.  They returned three hours later, grabbed more candy, and then left to spend the night at Sophie’s friend’s house.  Willow’s friend’s parents hung out with us for awhile, and that was fun.  Then Willow and her friends left with her friend’s parents to go trick or treat and she came home even later.  And, honestly, I wasn’t mad or anything – not at all.  We were way too loosely organized on the execution of the logistics – people will just appear! and hang out!  But it was sort of funny to me that they’d been begging for this party for weeks and then they were all Nah, I’m good, actually.  Later!  I think just the idea of the party was the fun part for them.

We ended up with a house full of mostly teenagers.  They drank hot apple cider, sat by the fire for a while, listened to records on Lex’s turntable.  (The Shins, because they are a little bit hipstery, even though they’d give me major side-eye for saying so.)

We took turns answering the door for trick or treaters, and every time I did there were these teeny little kids and I didn’t cry, mostly, but I was super emotional because my kids don’t need me to take them trick or treating anymore and because I ate probably a full bag of candy corn and then drank a beer and a glass of mulled wine and I had some extra feelings. In my defense, tho —