All tricks, no treats.

Jake's first Halloween was....interesting, to say the least.

Trick or treat started at 6pm on Friday....around 5:50, we had Jake all ready to go in his costume & we were going to take him over to our next door neighbors before the kids showed up to show him off. So we're in front of our house and Brian has 2 chairs set up....I have our digital camera in my hand (which I meant to put in my back pocket to take pics of the little girl next door in her costume) but I'm trying to get Gracie clipped to her leash, so I set the camera on a chair to free up a hand....and totally forget the camera. We go next door for maybe 3 minutes and a big group (probably 12 or so) teenage boys come to the neighbors house & they're being all rowdy & pretty rude. They leave & Brian says "I bet they took all our candy" (we had left a small bowl on the front porch since trick or treat hadn't started yet, we didn't even think about it) so we back to our house and realize they had taken the candy. So, I'm annoyed, but I get over it & refill the bowl quickly because there are other kids coming toward the house.

Fast forward about 20 minutes and I go to reach in my back pocket to take a pic of Jake & Gracie....and my heart just stops as I realize my camera isn't there & I remember leaving it on the chair. So we frantically search everywhere, thinking it might have fallen in the grass or something....nope, it's GONE. We are 99.9% positive it was those boys since they are the only ones who came through. Brian calls the cops & they say they'll send someone out...in the meantime, he gets in his car to find them & make sure they haven't left our development. he comes back about 10 minutes later & said he found them, but there are about 15 of them by now (and it's dark, so he doesn't want to say anything to them by himself). He also didn't want them to get away, so he decides to "pursue them on foot" by locating them again & walking a little ways behind them. The cops show up, take my statement and Brian tells them where they're at, but the cop basically said since we didn't actually SEE them take the camera, there's not much he can do if they don't turn it over.

So I've pretty much convinced that the camera is gone (and I'm so mad at myself for leaving it), I'm in tears...the cop shows back up about 10 minutes later with the camera in hand!! He said told them that we saw them take the camera and if someone didn't turn it over, he was hauling them all to jail!! I guess that scared them enough that they quickly gave it back :)

they did delete all of my pictures which was upsetting, but I had most of them uploaded already....and they did take some lovely shots of themselves flipping the camera off & other classy things (I thought about posting the pictures on here & telling everyone that if you see any of these punks lurking around the streets, give them a quick kick to the shin, but then I thought better of it....)

At least this gives Brian a good story to tell...he enjoys using the phrases "I tailed them in the car" and "Then I pursued them on foot to stake out their location". We were one wife beater shirt away from a real episode of cops. (Sing it with me now...."Bad boys, bad boys....whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?")