ranking Halloween candies

I'm not sure where you fall on the celebrating Halloween, and that's okay.  It's not really pertinent to this post.  What is important is fun sized candies, and which ones are the best.  I know that tomorrow, I can buy whatever fun sized candy I want for half price or less.  So even if you pass on Halloween celebrations, you still have a vested interest in this time of year and its candy offerings.  Here are my favorite Halloween candies to receive, and by receive, I mean take from my son's candy stash the day after Halloween.

1.  Butterfinger

I don't know what it is about shrinking this candy bar down to size that makes it taste so much better.  I kind of like Butterfinger in its original state, but I don't really buy it.  Maybe it's too crumbly or greasy or sticky in my teeth.  I don't know.  What I do know is that Jakob will not get to eat any of those this week, because I will eat them all as soon as he goes to bed.

2.  Heath bar

Here's another candy that I do not buy in full size form, but I love to eat in miniature versions.  It's also really good on ice cream.  Although I couldn't stand to eat a full size Heath bar, I could gladly stand to eat an entire bag of little Heaths.  It doesn't make sense.  It's just the way life is.

3.  Peanut M&M's

This is actually my favorite candy.  If I walk into a store with the intention of buying candy, or I get suckered into buying one at checkout, it's almost always going to be Peanut M&M's.  I just love them.  The only downside is that it is also Jakob's favorite candy, and I could never steal his favorite from him.  That's why I don't let him have little Butterfingers.  I don't want it to become his favorite.

4.  Mr. Goodbar

Such a distinguished candy!  Nobody knows what his first name is, because he is so respected that no one is on a first name basis with him.  I'm surprised his distinguished position doesn't move him above fourth place, but you can only rest on your past accomplishments so much.  But he's still tasty enough to come in the top five.  Not too shabby for a candy bar that is just chocolate and peanuts.  He doesn't even have a candy shell!  And that, Mr. Candy, is why you are not in third.  Sorry.

5.  Hershey bar

It's pretty plain.  It's usually the last candy to go.  But it is so good.  You can't argue with Hershey's milk chocolate, unless you're European, and then you probably can, because I hear your chocolate is richer and more delicious than the American version.  But I digress.  They are just square Hershey's Kisses, and since I have personal space issues, I prefer a bar to a kiss.  Plus, they're more securely sealed, so I don't have to wonder if you secretly licked the candy before giving it to me, a concern every boy has for his entire life.

Those are my top 5.  What are your favorites?

Fun fact: none of the candies I listed are in the picture I posted.  Shame on me.

children gone wild

When you leave a kid unattended, and they know they are completely unattended, things can get pretty dicey.  You never know what you might find.  It may be messy, it may be naughty, and it may just be funny.  Depends on the kid, I suppose.

Jakob doesn't get left unattended for very long as a general rule.  He is three, after all.  It's not like we would leave him home while we ran to Target or went on a date.  That would be ridiculous and probably criminal.  But he has been unattended before.  Like when Sarah has been sick in the past (and she hasn't called to tell me), she has kept him in our room while she slept for a little bit.  And he's usually quite sweet about the whole thing.  He'll get himself a snack sometimes, or maybe he'll find a DVD to put in, and he'll sit by her and quietly watch our bedroom TV.  He'd never really been sneaky, mischievous, or crazy about it, and it's happened a few times.

Last week, Jakob finally went a little wild, as far as he goes.  It was Thursday, and I intended to stay up to watch the Tigers.  Sarah was in the bedroom reading, and I was in the living room.  But we were both coming down with something.  I felt myself falling asleep, but I thought I knew that she was awake, so no big deal.  She wasn't awake, though. She had also fallen asleep.  So when I fell asleep around 8:45, I accidentally left Jakob unattended.  I only slept for 30 minutes, though, because he sprang into action.

At 9:15 PM, I was awakened by the sound of one of Jakob's loud trucks - one I do not usually let him play with in the living room, because it's so stinking loud on the hard floors- accompanied by his making really loud truck noises.  I was startled out of my sleep.  I look over at him, and he is just playing and having a good time doing something in the living room that he usually doesn't do.  No big deal, though.  He's just playing with his toys.  I tell him to put it away in his room, because it's time for bed. As we are walking out of the living room, I see Sarah's bag of Lucky Charms on the table, no box in sight.  I look at him, and he has a few marshmallows in his left hand. We don't let him eat that cereal, because he doesn't eat the cereal.  He only eats the marshmallows and then asks for more.  But he got into them, and he was eating only marshmallows.  I put them away and followed him down to the bedrooms, where we got ready for bed.

Knowing he was completely unattended and could do whatever he wanted, Jakob ate Lucky Charms marshmallows and played with a bedroom only toy in the living room, yelling and laughing throughout it all.  This is his going wild for now.  No coloring on walls.  No parties.  No playing with matches.  No drinking or drugs.  Just sugar cereal and a toy truck.  I love this age.

I've been forgiven

It is good to receive forgiveness.  Isn't it?  I've been forgiven by Jesus, my wife, my parents, my siblings, my friends, and others over the years, and I've never once wished that someone would have held something against me and carried a grudge.  Forgiveness feels much better.  But sometimes I have wronged a person I was not in position to even apologize to, because I had no idea who they were.  I know that specifically, almost 20 years ago, my brother Dan and I stole from someone we didn't know.  And today I was forgiven by that person, because I happen to meet him and find out that he was the owner of what we had stolen as children.  Here's the story.

When we were younger, my brother Dan and I learned how to steal stickers from those 50-cent machines at a lot of grocery stores.  No, I won't tell you how we did it.  I've only ever told one person, and that was Mark, who I met today, since he owned the machines.  Anyway, we did it one time to see if it would really work, because the kid who told us how was kind of fast and loose with the truth.  But then we got excited, because it did work, and the exotic sports car stickers were so cool.  So we did it again.  And again.  And again.  In total, we did it eleven times, giving each of us a complete set of 5, plus one extra Lamborghini sticker.

Our mom noticed the new stickers and was annoyed that we had wasted so much on them.  We didn't care, cause we hadn't spent anything on them, and we went to our room to apply them to our basketball card folders.  But as we did, we both started feeling really guilty about it.  After some discussion, we went back downstairs and told our mom what we had done.  I cannot speak for Dan, but I had guilty tears in my eyes.  We asked if there was a way to make it right, and she said we could apologize and pay for them.  So we went right back over to Meijer with $5.50 and an apology note in an envelope.  The Meijer customer service worker told us they didn't own the machines, but they could pass it on to the owner.  So we left.

I met the man that owned that machine today.  I was buying a gum ball machine from him for children's ministry.  More on that another day.  But after talking to him about when he started his business, and how far the range was of his business.  It turns out he had those machines in the Meijers in Grand Rapids at that time.  So I told him about what my brother and I had done, and I was sure to include the part about us paying for them in the end.  I was able to apologize to him almost 20 years later, and he just laughed and said it was okay.  I can now sleep peacefully tonight, knowing the big sticker scandal has finally been settled, and I've been forgiven.