The great candy buy-back

So our neighbor was looking for information on a post-Halloween 'candy buy-back,' and I still had the newspaper with the information (s0 I am turning into my newspaper-cherishing mother after all!) so I gave her a call and recited the details. This was at about 4:30 on Monday night, and the kids are at my feet in the kitchen 'playing' with our miles and miles of candy collected on Saturday night. (Which was a blast by the way -- the kids zooming from house to house with the neighborhood crew, myself running behind with Maeve in arms, Maeve shivering out the words "Happee Halloweeen!" by the end of the night, Drew toasty warm thanks to the beers and bottle of wine hidden in his handy-dandy Trader Joe's insulated bag tucked in our red wagon.) Jackson had about 25 tupperware containers out so he could sort the candy by type, color, size -- you name it. He was lining it up, mimicking the sound of a grocery store scanner. Perfectly content to admire -- but not eat -- all this candy. Maeve on the other hand would sneak any piece she could get her hands on. Sweet thing that she is though, she would hand it back to me -- all I had to do was ask.

So back to the details of the candy buy-back. "Martine Dentistry. Out at Stonegte. Yeah, Stonegate Drive. From four to seven p.m. tonight. Okay. Have fun. Bye."

Jackson, my little set of ears, of course overheard this conversation and was intrigued.

J: "What are they doing with the candy, mommy?"

K: "They are going to send it to the servicemen and women in Iraq."

J: "Are they gonna eat it?"

K: "Yes."

Hmm. Eyes are thinking. Jackson sets about four pieces of candy into my giant reusable shopping bag. I explain that you get one dollar for one pound, and four pieces of candy will not equal a pound. The rest is blurry as I tried my best to explain to him what one pound would look like, reassure him he will get money and that he will get to use it to buy a toy, and we go back and fourth over which pieces of candy our family likes, which we want to keep and which we want to donate. In the end I gave him a small tupperware to put all the "to keep" candy in. It seemed like it took forever, probably only about 10 minutes, but finally we ended up with a huge and heavy bag to donate and a little to keep too. (Seriously, I would have never asked my kids to give up their candy. I truly, truly love sugar.) So we got on shoes and coats and loaded up the car.

What a great setup and idea this dentist's office had! A servicemen greeted us in uniform, the ladies at the front took our candy and weighed it. We had ten pounds! I could not believe it. This was the limit, so it is a good thing we saved a little (good for everybody!). Then the kids had to sign a giant card that was being sent to the troops with the candy, (yeah, for Jackson for making his own J!), and follow some ghosts around the office to the banker. (The cartoons on the TV screens really sidetracked the kids -- a dentist with TV, how things change.) The dentist/banker then handed Jackson ten single dollar bills, one by one. We picked up a little goody bag with flashing toothbrushes Jackson loved and off we went. (You should have seen the dance he was doing with these flashing toothbrushes, buck naked, in the complete dark in front of the mirror in his bathroom last night. "What is this a rave?" Drew wanted to know.)

And then we all headed to one of my favorite toy stores to buy the toys -- five bucks each. The store even gives an "allowance discount" when kids use money they earned to buy toys. How sweet.

So, theoretically speaking, we should all have fewer cavities, fewer gained pounds, fewer sticky "what is this" to find, and fewer candy theives to catch. Another one of those unplanned plans that worked out perfectly. Love it!