Trunk or Treat BUST

[Since I have only five minutes to blog before picking up the kids from school, I'm literally stealing this entire verbage - with a few personal and relevant edits - directly from Holly's blog...hope you don't mind, Hols! XOXO]

We had such a great time at last year's Trunk or Treat, that we thought, hey, let's go again this year, but to the bigger one. Sounds like an awesome idea, right? WRONG!!!! Well, I will say this, the kids had a good time and that's all that matters.

This year's Trunk or Treat was put on by the Granite Bay Bayside church which is the MEGA MEGA church with like 4000-6000 members. I guess in the past their Trunk or Treats have been held in their parking lot and have done well so they decided to move it to the All American Speedway in Roseville. It sounded like fun since it was being held on the actual racetrack (and it was pretty cool to get to walk around the actual speedway track, I might add!).

Parking wasn't too bad once we got past the incredibly long line on the street (and thanks to Jessi and Erik who opened up a spot for us to cut in to at the front of the line since we had been waiting about 20 minutes while barely moving in stopped traffic!). Now we knew that a ton of people were going to be there, but not like this. There were just MASSES of people. My biggest concern of course was holding onto the kids since there were soooo many people. Luckily, they stayed close to us for most of the time.

I think the hardest part for everyone was waiting in line for the candy, but they all did really well for the most part. Instead of moving in one direction through the Trunk or Treat line, for some reason people were going in both directions which made it extremely difficult to navigate the kids in. There were TONS of big kids pushing in front of all the little kids, and it got to be too much after awhile - Sawyer wanted nothing to do with Trunk or Treating after about five or six cars, so Mitch took him to play a few games for awhile while Sutton and I hit up a few more cars. He came back with a carabiner that he had won as a prize - seems that the prizes were either a carabiner or a bible. Now, I understand that there will likely be religious prizes at a church event, which is completely fine, but really...a bible? I mean, he's three. He can't even read. Can he at least have a Noah's Ark coloring book, a WWJD bracelet or even an "Our God is Awesome" pencil?!?

It was definitely not the best planning on the church's part. This was not even organized chaos, it was just unorganized and chaotic. We made it through almost one side of the track and then called it a night. All the food, bounce houses, and games were in the middle field, but even those were packed with people and the lines were just as long. I feel really bad since I had convinced my sister to go to the big event with us, but as long as the kids had a good time dressing up and getting whatever candy they got, I guess that's what matters. We will definitely go back to Trunk or Treat again next year, but only to the SMALL Bayside Church branch one. Learned my lesson here that bigger is not better! Oh well!


Hattie (Yoda), Sutton (bumblebee), me and Sawyer (fireman) ready to fill up our treat bags


Sutton saying "Dis is NOT candy!" after he got an "Always wear your bike helmet" slip of paper from one of the booths. Nice.

Stella looked adorable in her fairy costume, but she wasn't all that excited to be there either lol. I think she was pretty overwhelmed with all those people.

See what I mean? This was at the very start of the event.

At least Holly and I managed to get in our mandatory self portrait at the event ;)

There were still tons of people coming in as we were leaving. It took us over an hour to trunk or treat at just a few cars. The boys both had about twenty pieces of candy in their bags when we left, so I guess we probably hit about fifteen cars, twenty tops (accounting for the fact that they both ate a couple of Now-N-Laters on the way to the car) :)

Hey, at least we got a lollipop, right? That's the best prize of all for these guys!