Tricks or Treats?

Today we went to a neighboring suburbs downtown's businesses trick-or-treat "fest." It was fun -- lots of kids in fun costumes. A chance for our kids to wear their costumes again. My older son is a skeleton/vampire (started out as a vampire, but the cape started bugging him so he now wears last year's skeleton costume with the white face paint and fake blood from the vampire) and my little one was Buzz Lightyear.

Of course, in the car on the way there my husband and I tried to reinforce to the kids that they absolutley should NOT eat any candy without having a grown-up look at it first. This warning was not because we are health freaks, but because of the food allergies. My older son is allergic to dairy, eggs, peanuts and tree nuts and my younger has all those allergies, plus a bonus ... wheat!

It was amazing to me how many of the candies have nuts in them! This isn't really a surprise to me; it's not like I've been living in a cave the last 30 years and I understand why ... they are yummy! Peanut butter cups, snickers, peanut m&ms, almond m&ms, I could go on and on. But since the schools have gone to the peanut-free zone, I don't see all those candies as much any more.

Luckily a lot of the places had dum-dum lollipops, starbursts, dots, and licorice -- all safe for Buzz and the vampire/skeleton. And I guess all the "illegal" candies that made it into the candy haul can be treats for mommy and daddy.

It is scary to think of what would happen if one of my boys ate one of those "treats" -- to say it would be a trick is an understatement. Honestly I'm not sure what would happen to them because they've never had nuts. I've seen the reaction when they eat milk or eggs, but peanuts are still a mystery ... thankfully.