Candy Conundrum

Halloween is awesome. Dressing up is awesome. Trick or treating is awesome. Candy is awesome. It's all awesome.
When you're a kid.
When you're a parent it's all awesome except for the candy part. The candy part is a problem. This year we collected just north of eight pounds of candy. There is no way we could consider ourselves good parents if we let our kids down that much candy. How do we deal with this?
When they were very little it was easy. We went trick or treating and by the next morning when they looked in their plastic pumpkins they had 2 or 3 pieces of candy and a variety of packages of crackers and goldfish and such. When you're three you don't pay so much attention to what you get, just that you get. All the better if you find out the next morning that all of those nice houses gave you treats that you can eat! Yay!
Eventually that fell apart. My younger daughter runs back from every house announcing exactly what it is that she has scored. I'm not sure that she keeps a running tally, but she has a pretty good idea what she's carting around. We do still occasionally actually receive a package of crackers or goldfish, which ends up ok, because those can be taken to school as part of lunch. The candy though has a different fate. Every night after dinner, and weekends after lunch too, each child may pick out one piece of candy. Restrictions apply if you're very little or you have braces or you fall into some other special category. This goes on for one week, usually eight days actually, until Halloween candy season is declared officially over. A week of candy for desert is all we can do.
What to do with the extras? Well, that's always been pretty easy to deal with. For most of the time that we have had kids, my sister didn't. We simply got together all of the candy, explained that Aunt Biggie didn't get to go trick or treating because she didn't have kids, and sent it off to her. Postage paid and problem solved. Then she went and ruined our excellent plan by having a daughter. If I thought I was a bad dad for allowing my four kids to eat eight pounds of candy, then I'd be an even worse uncle for sending something like six remaining pounds to my niece. Also, my sister has threatened to retaliate by sending her leftover candy to me and I'm not sure I want to engage in that kind of arms race. The only one who wins that kind of battle is the post office.
Like everything else with raising kids, we've adapted. At my wife's office is a wonderful woman who works the front desk. There's a lot of things that make her wonderful, but as far as my kids are concerned, her perpetual bowl of candy is tops. Whenever they come to the office to visit, they never leave empty handed. So now that's what we do with our leftovers, we provide fodder for the feed bowl. Again, problem solved.
All parents deal with the candy issue in their own way. Some people we know refuse to trick or treat or only attend scheduled events where the quality of booty is known in advance. Some allow their children a sugar fueled free for all until everything consumed in a mad pre-diabetic rush. We all find a place where we're comfortable dealing with the candy conundrum.