Each year, Matix, Marley, and Cash come home from trick-or-treating with loads of candy?enough to feed an army! Or to make an army sick, I should say. I must admit, I totally overindulged (compared to my normal sugar intake) this Halloween, and woke up the next morning with a severe blood-sugar crash. Even after breakfast, I was seeing spots, had a stomach ache, and was wishing I hadn?t consumed so much sugar the night before. Don?t worry ? I remedied the situation by bypassing the oats I had eaten with a quick shot of OJ to bring my blood-sugar levels up to where my body thought they needed to be. Ugh?
The worst part of all of it is that I still have candy galore laying around our house now, and Cash is constantly walking up to me with his puppy eyes, saying, ?Mama, trick-or-treat?? This means he wants to trick or treat in our pantry. ?
Time to break out the Powell Pack Family Tradition. What is it, you ask?
While we do believe that the kiddos should indulge a little, and not be restricted from sweets of their choice every now and then, we also feel it?s a good idea to guide them to choose health. This tactic has been a miracle worker in our home: we buy their Halloween candy! Chris and I offer them the option to save 10 pieces of candy (of their choice) to enjoy, and the remaining pieces are purchased by us at a nickel a piece. For 60 pieces of candy, the kids receive $3.00 to use at the local dollar store.
They love this, and I think they have more fun choosing toys at the dollar store than they could ever have eating candy!
I have never been more ready to buy (and throw away) so much candy?
Daddy, get ready to open up your wallet?for a good cause!
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38 Responses
My guys saved their favorites (when they’d go trick or treating, they’d decided they were too old a couple of years ago) and then give their big brother his favorites (as “payment” for him taking them around), let his friends take what they wanted and then dumped the rest into the bucket of stuff we were handing out.
I don’t buy the sweets and junk… I started when they were little so they got used to not having it in the house. This allowed my MIL and FIL to “treat” the kids with whatever (sugary cereal, fruit snacks, etc) an it was never a big deal because it wasn’t something they got on a regular basis.
We sent to troops last year. I’m about to box up this yrs left overs and mail out soon.
Wow, that’s a great idea!
How about instead of throwing it away – send it to the troops that are deployed!?
Great idea. I started the tradition 6 years ago to do gingerbread houses annually for Christmas. My trainer gave me the idea of instead of buying all the candy to decorate the gingerbread houses – have the kids save their Halloween candy. Worked great because when Christmas is over the Houses go to the trash with all the candy on it.
What a great idea!
My parents did that with us too! Right when we got in from trick or treating, we dumped out our candy, chose the 20 pieces we wanted to keep, and then they bought the rest for either a nickle or a dime a piece (I can’t remember).
I love it. We have been buying our kids candy for years. I’d much rather they buy a toy than have all that candy around the house. Although our kids are getting older and a nickel a piece doesn’t work any more. It’s still worth it. Glad someone else does it too.