Adult Trick or Treating or The Hierarchy of Candy

     So my children's birthdays came and went. The boys are now 3 and 6 and are they busy!! Busy is the nice word for wound like a top if you're curious. Halloween quickly approached and Gabriel wanted to be a ghost pirate (reusing his brother's Jack Sparrow costume) and Sebastian 24 hours before Halloween decided he wanted to be an Angry Bird. I used to be an anti-Angry Bird fan till I started playing it.  My chef is addicted to it and is constantly playing it. Don't get him started on Angry Bird Season's or Rio.
      So in 24 hours I made a costume for Sebastian. Trick or treating went smoothly and we had a blast. Once the kids were in bed, the war began. Luckily the boys are young enough that we can swipe candy and they don't notice, much.  It all begins with the chocolate and I don't mean all chocolate. It's the Hershey's, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Snickers, Milky Ways, Twix and Kit Kats.  They are the royalty from the plastic pumpkin bucket. Then comes the commoners Milk Duds, Whoppers, Nestle Crunch, Skittles, M&M's, gum, Twizzlers and Tootsie Rolls. Then you've got the bottom of the bucket. You have no name brand lollipops. Actually, all lollipops are the lowest of the low. You'll be holding onto these till Easter.  Along with the lollipops and gum you have a lot of no name candy that you wouldn't eat when you were 7.  Every so often you may get the holy grail of Halloween candy. These rarely are found in a bucket now a days. For example, full sized candy bars, those styrafoam UFOs that remind you of the wafers at church except that they are filled with little balls of candy, Squirrel Nut Zippers are up there too, the strawberry hard candy that we pick out of the bowl at the doctor's office, and every so often you might find a fireball.
      I usually pick off all of the chocolate before Eric consumes 15 to 20 pieces in one sitting (I'm being nice). For the next few days we end up relocating the bucket a couple of times without informing the other or consolidating the two buckets into one.
       This made me stop and wonder. If adults went Trick or Treating, what would we want in our orange pumpkin bucket.....full sized candy bars, definitely peanut butter cups and I would imagine all of things we used to get in our buckets when we were little. How many of you used to get caramel popcorn balls. Yes, I was one of them. The only thing I would pawn off onto my mom were Necco wafers.  The dollar bills from grandparents never hurt either.
       At first I felt guilty eating a piece here and there when my kids did all of the collecting but, I'm saving them from quite a few tooth aches.  I'm preventing them from overloading on candy between now and Christmas when the kitchen table seems to blow up with food. For now I will sit and continue to rationalize our thieving behavior and put the bucket back on top of the fridge.