and then they ate candy

they ate a lot of candy
if fact that was their dinner...
let me explain
some history
we have a holiday-candy-rule in our house

all candy from one holiday must be thrown away on the next holiday


this rule became law for us quite a few years ago after New Years when we were looking around the house at all the bowls of candy and junk food left over from Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and then the New Years junk as well...

so this is how it looks ... any holiday that might end up with candy is the house, Halloween is an obvious one,  gets thrown away on the next 'holiday' we use this term lightly...

think any day that mail might not get delivered or that the kids might have something fun planned at school...

so after Halloween we choose Veterans Day as our throw-away-holiday...

• Thanksgiving candy/junk food/misc desserts still hanging around you can choose Dec 7th (National Pearl Harbor Day) or wait until Hanukkah starts (a different day every year, this year it's Dec 21st), we usually go with the girl child's birthday on December 2nd as our throw-away-day
• of course Christmas treats get thrown away on New Years
• New Years on Martin Luther King Jr Day (one of the Mondays in January)
• Valentines candy gets thrown away on Presidents Day
• St. Patricks Day Candy (yes we have candy from the leprechauns that reek havoc in our house) gets thrown away on April Fools day...

and those are most of the candy-getting-holidays that we experience in our home and the holidays that we use as our throw-away-days...

we are also a bit on the stingy side when it comes to all that candy and our kids...
they usually haul in a boat load of candy on Halloween (with all the carnivals and the trick-or-treating and school parties), we let them eat a few pieces that night, get one in their lunch box the next day and then usually one for 'dessert' every night until the throw-away-day...
all Halloween candy gets put into one large family candy bowl the day after Halloween...
and then I start throwing away all the gross candy from day one...
I am not a lover of suckers or small hard candy so I'm usually chuckin' those before they hit the candy bowl
and then all the fruity chewy things go next
anything banana flavored is toast -seriously banana flavored candy is NASTY!
cheap chocolate never sees anything but the garage bag

so the above candy rule and some other events listed below led to the crazy parenting choice of candy for dinner....
this year on the Eve of Veterans Day we still had a LOT of candy...
I had not grocery shopped in FOR.EV.ER
I had no desire to create dinner out of thin air
Beau was off to a meeting
there was no school the next day (Veteran's Day)
...
so we called the kids into the kitchen,
showed them the candy bowl...
reminded them of the 'candy rule' and that the next day, Veterans Day, was the throw-away-day for all this candy...
and then told them that we decided they could eat candy for dinner...

their reaction when we told them they could eat candy for dinner

we took the bowl of candy into the living room, dumped it out and told them to eat up...
...sadly, we have no pictures of this, I think we were still in shock that we were letting them eat candy for dinner that we forgot to photograph the event....
we had 2 rules

• no fighting
• if you get sick, make it to the bathroom,
       if mom's not making dinner, she's also not cleaning vomit off carpet!

after dumping the bowl of candy on the floor we turned on a movie and let them veg and eat candy...
around 8 pm they were both saying their were hungry
(parenting note: I had advised them to go with the 'protein' candy, stuff with peanut butter and nuts would fill them up better, they ignored this wise counsel!)
so the wonderful mother that I am, I popped them up some popcorn to fill them up!
we have decided that we MIGHT make this a family tradition for Halloween candy and Veterans Day Eve...the kids were so very shocked...they're still talking about it (and probably will for years to come)...
and surprisingly enough they really didn't eat that much candy, they put a small dent in the candy bowl, and were very willing to help me throw it all away the next morning!