At the Baden house, our Halloween tradition is emptying out our cupboards and giving goodies out to trick-or-treaters from the neighborhood.

This year, we went to extremes to please the little rugrats dressed up as Spider-Man, princesses, ghouls, and the like. We even gave out treats to the children who didn't dress up for Halloween. 

My darling wife had grand plans: Pizza and "Halo" all night. The TV is right by the front door, so we could stop playing when the usual "trick or treeeeeat!" is called out.

About 115 children came to our door last night. We had 40 juiceboxes. That's a problem.

Hence, the emptying the cupboards tradition. We also gave out roughly 12 granola bars, 10 cans of A&W root beer, 13 Crystal Light On the Go packets, 18 Swiss Miss hot chocolate packets, and 12 pieces of candy (Snickers and Reese's peanutbutter cups). 

My wife was pleading for permission to turn off the lights and deter the trick-or-treaters, but the kids were pleading for pop. So I kept going back to the kitchen until 8:45 p.m., when the cupboards turned up barren. My raid was over. And a caravan of parents' cars was leaving.

To put this into perspective, we always know that there is the potential for hundreds of trick-or-treaters to come by our house on Halloween, because we live on a busy street in a nice neighborhood where a lot of people take walks. It was a fairly warm night, as far as Halloweens in Minnesota go. So we should've -- like last year -- put two and two together.

Oh well. We'll probably make the same mistake next year. Thank goodness we keep a lot of snacks in our cupboards. And thank goodness we don't have any snacks left. That's better than having to eat a whole bag of candy that we didn't give out.