Boo Baskets

I've been trying to come up with fun stuff for the boys since so much of life has been messed up and boring this year. I'm not sure what trick-or-treating will be like. It sounds like there are plenty of people planning to give out candy, but who knows. Besides that, since Halloween is a Saturday, I won't have the boys anyway. For the last four years, we've gone trick-or-treating with the boys' same friend group so this year will be different since dad has the boys too.

So a week ago, we picked up supplies to make a bunch of "Boo baskets". Baskets filled with candy and other things that you go secretly leave on your friends' doorsteps. We got things like glow sticks, candy, microwave popcorn, yo-yos, and other fun stuff like that.

We filled up eight baskets and last Thursday was the day we drove around after dark dropping them off. We first stopped at Qdoba for dinner. We went to the park to eat, but it got too cold so we just sat in the car.

Then it was time to drop off baskets. I told the boys they had to wear their costumes while we were dropping things off. The first house, Grady wasn't totally sure of his friend's address. We drove up and down the street more than once to try to find it. I stopped the car two houses down and Grady ran down the street with the basket and dropped it off and came running back. 

The next house was another one of Grady's friends. He didn't have this kid's address, but I know his mom so I found the address in my contact list. This house was a court so we had to be sure which house it was and then I had to park down the street, facing outside the court, so we wouldn't be obvious when we were leaving.

The plan was: Grady takes the basket, puts it down on the porch, rings the doorbell, and quickly runs away. Well, Grady decided the problem was, in order to get back to the car he'd have to run down the driveway and then down the sidewalk on the front door side. So there was too much possibility of someone seeing him.

So instead he rang the doorbell and ran over to the garage door and planned to wait until his friend went back inside before he ran back to the car. The only problem was, it was the dad that answered the door and seemingly got pretty irritated someone was pranking his house. He walked out of the house to investigate and found Grady, asking him in angry words who he was and what he was doing. I could see it in the rearview mirror and thought I was going to have to go rescue him.

I guess the dad calmed down and said he wouldn't tell his son who dropped off the basket (to keep the element of mystery), so everything was ok.

Onto the next houses. We dropped off a basket at one of Peter's friend's houses. Peter's first drop off. He got to the porch and the friend had recently installed a fence around the porch. He was gone for like two minutes and then came back with the basket because he couldn't figure out how to open the gate. So Grady took the basket and figured out the gate and left the basket.

But...it was the same friend we were going to borrow some board games from. I told Peter if he wanted to, he could go back up to the door and ask if we could borrow the games so his mom didn't have to make a special trip to our house the next day. We don't know if that clued them in that we were the ones to leave the basket, or if it added some misdirection since *obviously* someone wouldn't drop off a basket and then come back two minutes later.

Another set of houses. We hit up a set of kids that are next door to each other. So Grady took the basket to one house and Peter took one to the other. Grady's house...he couldn't find a doorbell so he says he just knocked really loud. He also said "I bet if someone saw me they would have been confused because I was just rubbing my hand on the wall trying to find a doorbell".

Peter's house...he got back to the car huffing and puffing and said "Wow. They have a really long driveway".

We got a couple more houses before we went home. The whole time in the car we're talking about the mystery of it all and wondering if anyone will figure out it was us.  Grady said "I'm not sure if anyone will know because if anyone saw me running away they'd just see a guy from the back in a green costume." Observe the green costume below. Grady is pretty easy-going when I laugh about things like that. It's just so funny to realize he has no idea what color animals are *supposed to* be.

I hope the boys think this is a pretty good holiday season, even if it looks a bit different than normal.