I'm married to a man-boy.

Don't get me wrong - I mainly love being married to a man-boy. He is always excited and energetic and playful - three adjectives that are the opposite of me, I feel. He and I nicely balance each other out, I think. I'm the uptight, tired, responsible worry-wart, and he's the fun-loving, falsetto-singing, kid-chasing life of the party. I pull him down to the earth and he lifts me up into the clouds.

I was really hoping to stay home on Halloween night so that I could hand out candy and lie on the couch (via that whole "tired" part of my personality) in between trick-or-treaters, but Ben insisted on handing out candy, because he wanted to "dress up and scare kids," in his exact words:

We've had this costume for like five years, and Ben wears it every year. He thinks it's so great. And this year, he painted his hands and feet black. And when he answered the door, he used this fake, scary, growley voice. He would say to the terrified trick-or-treaters, "Don't worry. I already ate."

So I dressed the two oldest kids up and we went out trick-or-treating. I wasn't about to try to deal with Angry Costume-Wearing Micah. Been there, done that. I left him home with the scary demon man. Again, I forgot to take my camera, and again, I'm regretting it. It was actually an unusually warm evening. And by that I mean that we only had to wear jackets. That's warm for here. This is so funny - we went up the street, and then down the street, and my kids were ready to be done. So different from when I was a kid. We used to go for hours and hours, getting as much candy as possible. But whatev. I was fine being done.

My parents like us to bring our kids over to their house to see their costumes and hang out for awhile, so I took the oldest two and left Micah and Ben at home. Ben was still in Scaring-Kids Heaven.

While I was gone, my friend Megs and her kids came trick-or-treating to our house (I stole this from her blog):

Her kids are dressed as some kind of computer game characters. I'm not sure which game. They're really cool costumes, though. Anyways, she told me that the kids rang the doorbell, Ben scared them, they grabbed the candy, and booked it out of there.

When we came home from my mom's house, I saw that there were no lights on in the house. I wondered if Ben went to bed super-early or something. No, he was there. Waiting in the dark for trick-or-treaters. I told him that no trick-or-treaters would come to a house that was dark. He insisted that it contributed to the whole scare-the-kids effect.

At the end of the night, while he was taking off all of his makeup, he excitedly told me that, next year, he's going to buy a baby doll, rip it open, and put fake guts in the tummy. Then he wants to answer the door and say, "Ohhhh, I was just eating..."

What a weirdo.

By the way, I cleaned up black smudges all over our house for the next three weeks or so. That makeup got everywhere. I'm not a fan. Because I'm the uptight, tired, responsible worry-wart of the relationship.