Rubber Eyeballs

Halloween came and went this year without any serious tragedy for our family...which I might add is a HUGE relieve compared to the year I had to walk around the neighborhood in tears of worry and anxiety, excorting my costumed baby and various other kiddies on the trick-or-treat journey, while my husband was hugging the hubcap of his patrol car and being shot at! Yes, this year was definatly mild in comparison. Thank God! Once again Alan was at work, so I met up with the wife and children of his sargeant and the step-daughter of another officer, and we all went trick-or-treating together. The only "rough" spot was when 3 became upset over some Spongebob candy she was given at one stop because as she put so plainly "we don't like Spongebob!!!" Which translates to "Mommy and Daddy won't let me watch Spongebob cartoons on TV." Thank God for Skittles which she, to my embarrassment, received in place of the offending candy. We continued making our rounds and finished up around 7:00 mostly due to the fact that 1 was getting cranky, apparantly not understanding the point of receiving all these goodies in a pumpkin without actually eating any of them yet. By the time we had completed the smaller circle in our neighborhood, 1 had put up with as much as she was going to take and it was time to call it a night. The sargeant's wife and I parted ways, and the step-daugher rode with me and my girls back to her parents' house where Alan was supposed to meet me after work. Well, while we waited 3 helped her teenaged friends pass out candy and scare the crap out of other little kids with this big ugly mask. When she put it on, literally all you could see remaining of 3 was her ankles and light-up Care Bear tennis shoes! I mananged to catch some of it on video for future humiliation purposes. I have to admit it was pretty funny! That is until the teenagers discovered that they could REALLY freak kids out by pulling candy out of the troll-like mask's HUGE nose rather than the candy basket. This resulted in numerous "oh gross" "uggghhhhhhh" and "Oh my God's" followed by several little kids fleeing in tears which of course was then accompanied by teenaged laughter and 3 with hands plantly firmly on what would have been her hips demanding in no uncertain terms to know "what's so funny you guys?!?!" What I failed to notice, in my efforts to keep up with both 3 and 1, is that 3 was sneaking candy out of the basket and eating it in between trips to answer the door. I know, I know, it should have been obvious...but...somehow I missed it. Only when we walked through our front door later that night and I heard three groan "Mommy...my tummy don't feel so good" did I start to question her willpower and ability to handle so much candy without consuming it. We had just made it down the hall to the bathroom when 3 was violently sick. "Are you ok?!?!" I asked. "Yea." She said. "I just ate too many eyeballs." I assumed she meant the little chocolate balls wrapped in decorative "eyeball" foil. In her case they seemed to be made of rubber!