Why I Oughta...

In what I know many of you will find to be a dissatisfactory notice, I'm disappointed to report that last night - Halloween 2021 - there was no visitor trick-or-treat tally that was conducted.  This is (now) the second year in a row that I've failed to both conduct the tracking assessment as well as failed to post the results here on the blog.  I'll take a COVID pass for 2020.  But, this year?  Just a product of the new neighborhood, going out with the kids to trick-or-treat and not being able to control the tracking.   Now...like a lot of you, we have video evidence that I could go through to try to recreate the visitor list and make a tally, but I don't have time for that this morning.  Here's an example showing the Mandalorian and his buddy who plays for the Chicago Bears.  ( Note...I grabbed this screenshot without the kids faces showing on purpose... ) Of note, I have started to track the weather on Halloween.  Yesterday - Halloween 2021 was perfect.  50's

Here's the tally from last night's visitors in Downers Grove:  32 kids we know.  20 kids we don't know.  15 adults with costumes.   3 kids no costume.  And 3 Adults no costume.    That would be a total of 73 with a pretty big asterisk. Last year, we had 24 total.  All kids we knew .  And that was a pretty sad number. I think it is safe to say that these numbers are in dispute.  For sure, the numbers in the red circles below, I think we can just simply throw out.  It was snowing like crazy and we don't live in Elmhurst any longer so there were no Adults and no babies out there like there have been in some years. So, let's throw out those numbers.  Minus 21.  Takes our 73 down to 52.   That seems plausible.  We did the whole 'bowl on the front porch' thing when we were out, so there's no counting those kids.  But, like we do every year, Nat has a little party at our house after trick-or-treating and there are more than a dozen kids that c

My...how the mighty have fallen.  That list above is our sad tally sheet from last night.  It only has five marks before we went out trick-or-treating and ended up with 24 total.  Oh,  and a big drink stain on it.  Twenty Four.  And that's being VERY GENEROUS by counting all the little ones that live on our block who came over to our house with their parents for a little post trick-or-treating party.  The five were kids that rang the bell and I dropped candy into their bowls/bags.  Mostly middle school kids.  The 19 others were kids who did, indeed, take candy from our bowls, but also stuck around for a while. We then went out with the kids to hit up the neighborhood.  And we put out a bowl.  About 150 pieces of candy (based on the bag having 300 pieces... I poured in about half) in the bowl.  Set it out on our front porch.  And put our Nest camera pointing towards it.  You can see the little orange bowl just off our front door mat below: It didn't take long for kid

What a difference!  Last year, we had 302 kids/others come to our door.  Last night?  77.  And that's not even super accurate as The Babe and friends did the bulk of the counting/handing out candy.  Oh...and we put out a bowl and went trick-or-treating with our kids for a while, too.  So, the numbers can't be verified by Price Waterhouse Coopers this year, unfortunately. We're in a different neighborhood with different size lots and setbacks.  We walked a few blocks over and the place was hopping with kids and felt a lot like Elmhurst did the past few years. So, here's the breakdown: 2017:  77 kids. 2016: 302 kids /total. In 2015, we had 346 total . In 2014, we had 308 total . In 2013, we had 326 total . In 2012, we had 327 total. In 2011, we had 269 total . In 2010, we had 236 total . In 2009, we had 184 total . Lowest candy year on record.  Good thing the savages in our house and neighborhood destroyed the candy bowl in our front hall during our little Ha

Earlier this week, I posted about this year's Halloween Trick-or-Treater tally (302 for the record) , but I also wanted to share one little change we made to our candy mix.  Normally, we have both 'full size' candy bars (for the kids we know) and the normal 'snack size' candy bars for everyone else.  (For the record, we get both a big bag of chocolate-based bars and a big bag of chewy/fruit-flavored treats.) We also have the blue pumpkin out front for kids who can't eat nuts and candy and what not, so Nat gets a set of plastic toys and spider rings and vampire teeth and what-have-yous, although I don't think we had anyone request that stuff this year. But this year, I also bought a book of 20 of those free small slurpee tickets that you see up top of this post.  They went fast!  I gave them to 'kids we know', so 20 of those kids got a little extra treat from us.   And at just $5 for 20 tickets , it was a fun little addition to the mix.  I

Last night, we had 88 'kids we know', 210 'kids we don't know' and just 4 adults with no kids.  That's a grand total of 302 trick-or-treaters. Comparing to last year's number of 346 total , we were down 12% overall.  And it felt that way in terms of kids coming to the door.  The weather was perfect, but there weren't as many cars parked up and down the block. In the specific categories, we had 73 'known kids' last year and 88 this year.  Could be because we recognized more kids or that more kids moved to the neighborhood.  However, last year we had 264 'unknown kids' compared to 210 this year.  That's a 20% drop. The reason?  Last year was on a Saturday.  And in looking at the historical numbers, I'm not calling this year a 'drop', but rather a reversion back towards the norm.  Therefore, 2015 was more a 'Saturday Surge' than anything. Historical totals: 2016: 302 total. In 2015, we had 346 total .

As you can see from the photo above, we ended up with 346 individuals to our door on Halloween.  That includes 9 adults, 73 'kids we know' and 264 'kids we don't know'. That's up from last year's tally of 308  and sets the new record for Halloween. This year: 346 total. In 2014, we had 308 total . In 2013, we had 326 total . In 2012, we had 327 total. In 2011, we had 269 total . In 2010, we had 236 total . In 2009, we had 184 total . A few things to note: 1.  It rained a bit his year.  Wasn't as bad as last year when it rained the entire time we were out trick-or-treating.  But that still likely made it a bit harder to turn-out for trick-or-treating for some.   2.  However...this was a Saturday.  That's the first time trick-or-treating wasn't on a 'school night', so I'm thinking that accounted for the increased turnout. 3.  We were down the block from where we normally have been.  The '09-'14 totals we

This year's total:  308 trick-or-treaters. That's down from last year's number of 326 .  (the numbers in parenthesis are last year's numbers) As you can see, the 'neighborhood kid' number was up 7 from last year, but the 'non-neighborhood kids' number dropped by more than 10%.  Have to believe that's because of the weather. In 2013, we had 326 total . In 2012, we had 327 total. In 2011, we had 269 total . In 2010, we had 236 total . In 2009, we had 184 total .

We had 327 trick-or-treaters come to our door last night.  Now...I have to admit, that my nephew wanted to do some of the 'tracking', so he was writing down some of the numbers so this may be fudged a bit, but not by a ton. That's 86 kids that we "know" (or live on our block/next block), 9 adults with no kids, 6 teens with no costumes, 1 girl who refused peanut M&M's and the rest made up of kids that we "don't know" and don't live in our neighborhood. The numbers saw a big jump this year and are on a clear upward trajectory. Last year, we had 269 total .  And only 37 kids that we "knew". In 2010, we had 236 total . In 2009, we had 184 total .