These kids today...

As we're new to the area, I didn't know how many trick-or-treaters to expect yesterday evening. Added to this is the fact that our street has only two houses on it, and we're the farther one of the two, so I didn't know if kids would even venture down to where we are, or if they'd prefer to just skip it and simply get candy from the easier to access houses. Well, it turns out we did have some trick-or-treaters - about 20 of them within about a 5 minute length of time. They were all dressed up pretty creatively - I especially liked the bee and the motocross guy (I didn't really like the Jimi Hendrix, who had a fake cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and who said, "Who says it's fake?" when I pointed it out). What I didn't appreciate was that the majority of the kids didn't say "Trick or Treat" when I opened the door. They just put out their little paws and grabbed Kit Kats, Nestle's Crunch bars, and Reese's Pieces. I hated that they just took for granted that I was going to give them candy without hearing the magic Halloween words. What's even worse is that out of the 20 kids, only 2 or 3 said "Thank you" after they'd taken their candy. I'm really into teaching Ben to be grateful these days, and to say thank you after other people do things for him, whether it's me making his lunch, Logan surrending a toy that Ben has to have, someone opening a door for us when we're out in the double stroller, or the UPS guy bringing a package to our door. I think gratitude is an extremely important thing, and I was saddened that very few of the kids showed it.