An ongoing debate about which time of year reigns is always in season at the Cote household.

I’m already completely outnumbered by boys; now I’ve become outvoted by these teeny knights of our round dinner table when it boils down to voting which time of year’s most optimal.

I’m a summer girl through and through. 

Though I admittedly live in the northeast by choice, winter’s deplorable.

Twice I’ve spent entire third trimesters pregnant during whopping summer heat waves, and I prefer those temps any day over alternatively discomforting dead of winter.

My husband and oldest son are adamant winter men. As my oldest made his recent case, “Summer’s not cozy – It’s sweaty and gross and you need popsicles just to feel better.”

But there’s no frostbite or frozen eyelashes, is there?

My middle son claims he loves summer most, but I know he says this to please me – he’s totally a team winter kid too. Sledding’s his jam.

I prefer the sand castles, they all prefer the snow forts.

And that’s fine, really. 

Because for a brief time of year, we can compromise.

Fall.

My round dinner table knights and I all stand united in solid admiration for the season which marries up our favorite seasons, that fleeting sprite of beauty that teases us with too temporary those bursts of golden and crimson trees, those autumn leaves.

The period spanning from that first greenhouse mum display to the last tryptophanic coma Thanksgiving night is our family middle ground, a season we unanimously cherish.

Plus, there’s pumpkins.

And then there’s fall’s crowning achievement, the holiday that combines so many of my favorite things:  creativity, chocolate, spooky stories, the Monster Mash.

It’s Halloween time, folks.

It’s an odd event, really. It’s the one jubilee in which most everyone unites to dole out massive quantities of M&Ms and Butterfingers to disguised children. And despite its sinister theme, the bulk of the participating populace are in a fantastic mood. 

I’ve always loved Halloween. It’s the caramel candy dip on the apple of a season.

As a kiddo, I’d craft my costumes from scratch – often based on a favorite book character – and delight in seeing my friends’ and family’s expert creations.

Though I truly wish I could say I’ve also constructed all my children’s costumes from the ground up each year, that would be a blatant falsehood. 

In the end, their costumes have become an adequate hodgepodge of homemade fused with Amazon shipped ready-to-wear. And that’s well enough for me.

Because once the trick-or-treating shenanigans are completed on All Hallows’ Eve night, once our kiddos become great pumpkins and get tucked into bed, we parents draw our fair share of our kiddos’ chocolate take.

Like the ghouls and goblins we are, we monster mash over to their treat bags and nosh on Kit Kats.
It’s one of those little secrets of which tots likely aren’t aware until they become parents themselves.
Perhaps parents too are Halloween creatures of sorts.

When our babes are first born, we feel like zombies; we trudge to the kitchen Franken-style to warm up bottles all hours of the night.

So by the time they’ve become of age to indulge on Halloween candy, we get a little batty and sneak some for ourselves, like phantoms in the night.

As I shared this with my mother recently, she commented that she, too, snuck some of my Halloween candy when I was a trick-or-treating youngin’ myself.

“I didn’t take much,” she said, “But you know, I loved Reese’s peanut butter cups.”

I was always short on peanut butter cups.

But she raised our family from scratch; when she should have been awarded the parenting Gold Cup, she got a peanut butter cup.

She earned those Reese’s at the very least.

And one day, when my own kiddos discover my husband and I have been smuggling their Snickers every eve of November, I hope they say the same for us.

That we deserved the chocolate things.

But as for awaiting the day we all agree that summer’s the best time of year, I’ve better luck successfully bobbing for apples.

Which is so gross, by the way.

In the meantime, we’ll always have our autumnal compromise – our mutual love of Octobers and their fiery piles of leaves. For our kids, fall means a love of cool weather and spooky tunes.

But for me, it’s a time in which I can enjoy last days of bearable weather as I snack on Pay Days.

So happy fall to all, and I hope your Halloween is a graveyard smash!