First Halloween in Vegas

In Nevada all the school children get a day off on Halloween. They call it Nevada Day. By noon today I was ready to get the children out of the house and do something. All morning long I had been thinking about where I could take the kids that is fun yet not too expensive just to save my own sanity and the house. Most days the only thing that will get the kids to finish their chores is the lure to do something fun. But it cannot be too far into the future even 3 to 4 hours is too long. I have to tell them we are leaving ASAP and if they don't hurry they will get left behind. It is a trick I have learned always works to get them to work fast. We drove around doing a few errands then went to the bowling alley. This is the first time Anne and Renae have bowled with bumpers. They loved it. We got two lanes and Adam, Kayleigh and Sven bowled in the other lane by themselves. Allison even rolled quite a few balls down the lane for mom. She was so cute as she squatted in front of the lane bobbing up and down then clapping her hands after they hit the pins. At four we drove, more like crawled to the Town Center Mall like everyone else in Las Vegas. We walked around for a while gathering candy from the stores we passed. Most of the stores candy were gone. The crowd of people was amazing. I was very afraid we would loose Maddie who was so excited to get more candy she was running ahead and just about got lost a few times. In the Center of the mall they have a playground for the kids with a band playing. They were letting the kids get up and sing Karaoke, which they dubbed Scaryoke. I was surprised when Anne stood in line to get her name on the list to sing. She didn't seem intimidated at all. I was very excited to hear her sing, but the waiting list to sing was too long and we had to go. Sven took a good picture of himself with "Jack Sparrow". We drove to the church for the annual Trunk or Treat. We were a few minutes late. They were serving chili and fresh scones with butter, honey and powdered sugar in the back of the parking lot, it was so yummy. They also had homemade root beer which I had not had in many years. The kids ran around gathering candy, and Mom was much more relaxed to let them roam where I knew they were safe. There were at least two wards represented so there were quite a few people. This is the first year we did not hand out candy from our house. The kids had fun and were thoroughly worn out by the end of the day, but before we went to bed we watched "Its the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown", we laughed the whole time. Definitely, we will skip the mall next year.