BOO! (Boo Humbug!)

This is not my favorite holiday. It's my own personal way of rebelling against my mother (it's her favorite!) I try to make it fun for the kids, but truth be told, when they are old enough to fend for themselves, I'll probably go to a movie or something on Halloween. I think the costumes are cute and all...I just am not creative about making them, don't sew, and hate all the candy overload. Boo humbug! Anyway, I still think my little goblins are pretty cute!

Another thing I don't like about Halloween is that they have to get dressed up (at least) three times: for their school parade, for the church party, and for trick-or-treating. For some that's no big deal, but since we have 3 girls and ended up with SIX costume changes this year...well, you know. I'm glad it's almost over.

The first pictures are of the school parade. Most years, they go through the neighborhood and it's supposed to be pretty fun. But this year, there was only about a 10 minute break in the rain so they just walked around the perimeter of the school, with all the doors open so they could get inside quickly if it started up again. Here is A - she looks cold but I don't think she really was, it was actually pretty comfortable yesterday: This is our vampire, E! That Southern Belle next to her is her friend from church. I'm so glad they got in the same class this year!

Now, I thought this costume was very cute, but I think it was a little "above" the elementary school level. No one seemed to get it. See if you can figure it out. If not, I guess we were not as creative as we thought we were. M came up with this herself:

Now, on to the church party. Notice we had some costume changes and added a kid. E changed from a vampire in red to a vampire in pink. M changed to hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream (we got that idea from my cousin's daughter!), and good old A who really loves her mom stayed as Minnie! We added our next-door neighbor and 4th daughter, S for this party, and she made a lovely witch!

M and S parading at the church! Isn't that little Jesse between them the cutest thing you've ever seen??

Trunk or treat!!

More trunk or treat action. Thankfully, the weather was briefly good for our trunk or treating. It started raining right as we were finishing up. The church party was a lot of fun!

Now, onto the ACTUAL halloween! The girls had about decided that they weren't going to go out tonight, for a couple of reasons: One was that they really got a lot of candy at the church and school parties. Who needs more candy?? And second, the weather tonight is ucky. All day it has been so windy. It's just been a gray, rain off-and-on, cold and windy day. So you'll see that our costumes for tonight got "warmed up" a bit. In the end, they just couldn't resist, and thus we have our actual halloween-trick-or-treating costumes:

My awesome Minnie wears the same costume (with a black sweatshirt underneath this time!) for the third time. I love that about Minnie!!

E decided to pull out last year's glamorous witch, complete with a purple sweatshirt underneath.

And...with her THIRD costume change, we have our vampire M.

That vampire looks like she wants to take a big bite of some mousie for dinner.

Funniest thing about tonight was, about as soon as they left, they were already back. It was too cold, and D said that more houses than not were blacked out. They went to six houses, including our two next-door neighbors, and that was it! Now they just got out of the shower and we are putting in a movie to complete our halloween evening. We haven't had a whole lot of trick-or-treaters, which means even more.....CANDY...for us! (Not that I don't like it, but really, enough is enough!)

Okay, I am having major trouble with my camera. The screen is totally blacked out even in good light, and I cannot see how to center the picture or anything. Here are some bloopers from mom trying to figure the dang camera out!!