Happy Halloween!

We had a great Halloween.  In fact, I’ve kind of written off Halloween as a fun holiday until this year.  It’s hard not to get into it when your kids are so thrilled with everything it entails.  The candy, the costumes, the spookiness.  I decided to quit being such a stooge about Halloween and even decorate with some spooky decorations (I’m pretty proud of the wreath we made pictured above…..that’s about as crafty as we get around here). 

I think part of the reason Halloween is great is because it really isn’t that much work….at least not yet….surely that will come in the future.  But for now, my kids are very non-demanding with their costumes and I’ve learned to resist the urge to encourage them to do anything too new or creative…..i just don’t have that kind of craftiness in me.

 Hazel was “the BADDEST WITCH IN THE WORLD”  (copying Beverley Cleary’s Ramona).  I was her black cat (Hazel’s left over costume from last year).  Can you guess who Charlie and Jeff dressed up as for our church’s trunk or treat party?  I’ll give you a hint, they did a little switcheroo.  Last year after Halloween when we gave Charlie his annual buzz he was quite disappointed to see that he didn’t exactly look like his dad….he still had hair down the middle of his head.   So this year, we decided to go all out and try to really make him look like Jeff.  The hairs style isn’t nearly as handsome and debonair on a 4 year old as it is on Jeff.  But, Charlie was thrilled.  In case you haven’t seen Jeff for a while, here’s what his current hair style is: See any resemblance? Here they are doing each other’s poses…click here and scroll to the bottom to get what these “poses” are all about.        We couldn’t really stand Charlie’s receding hairline for too long (it was too painful for Jeff to look at) so we shaved him bald and tonight for trick or treating Charlie went as an astronaut.  He had some pretty awesome moon boots that Jeff covered with tin-foil….but by the time I got the camera out he had destroyed them.  He did made sure to tell everyone that he really was going to be an astronaut when he grows up….this is not just a costume.

Little Emmeline was La La, the yellow teletubbie.  She’s pretty obsessed with Teletubbies (it’s the only thing I can get her to watch on TV).  However, she has been scared to death of her costume ever since it arrived in a mail a few weeks ago.  She is by far our most squeamish child.  She wouldn’t even put her little orange Halloween t-shirt on because she’s so scared of the black cat graphic on it.  Halloween season is not a good time to take her on errands (she gets genuinely terrified by decorations in stores…..especially the mechanical and noise making ones….I don’t blame her!).  I brought the La La costume in a bag to the trunk or treat thinking maybe I could convince her to put it on.  She was quite confused about the whole holiday…..why is Hazel’s face green?  Why does mom has weird fuzzy cat ears and what is dad doing with that hair on his head?  But, as soon as she saw the resulting candy that the kids got for wearing these costumes she faced her fears and, while trembling, put on her La La costume.  By the end of the night she was truly in character, marching around with her candy bag sticking out her genuine teletubbie belly.  I’m hoping I can convince her to wear it one last time tomorrow for a picture….luckily there’s enough candy around this place to bribe her with.

Happy Halloween!