Dad Life · Halloween
Halloween 2026: A Ladybug, Michael Jackson, and Three Bags of Candy
Halloween night has come and gone, and our house went through five costumes between three kids. I don’t know if that’s some kind of record, but it felt like one.
Emma was a ladybug. Rhett had two outfits this year — Michael Jackson and a disco dude. And Sadie had two as well: Cindy Lou Who and Belle. Everybody loved Sadie’s outfits, both of them. She had herself a night.
Rhett, on the other hand, didn’t leave his full outfit on long enough for anyone to like them. The full Michael Jackson look would last a little while, and then pieces would start coming off. He was in it for the candy more than the costume anyway — and honestly, I can respect that.
We trick-or-treated together as a family and went to the trunk-or-treat in Mayflower. Sadie loves getting candy — that part she’s all in on — but about forty minutes in, she was done walking. Little legs have their limit, and she found hers.
That same afternoon, our Halloween guide — the one we’d been building all fall — went live, so other families could find the trunk-or-treats and haunted houses around Arkansas. Seeing it out in the world the same day we were out using it felt pretty good.
By the end of the night we had at least three Walmart bags of candy in the house. Then came the part that might be the kids’ favorite tradition of all: the candy trading. Everything gets spread out, and what one doesn’t like, another one does. Deals were made, and somehow everybody walked away thinking they won.
So that was Halloween at our house: one ladybug, one pop star, one disco dude, one Cindy Lou Who, and one Belle — three bags of candy, and a little girl who gave out on walking forty minutes in. Wouldn’t trade a minute of it.
The next morning we shook off the sugar and started a whole different adventure — our first Club 52 stop at Pinnacle Mountain. That story’s here on the blog too.
— Chris Uting, That Arkansas Dad