My Halloween pictures aren't late, I just had to wait for the whole Hallowtide to be over :)
This year we kicked off the festivities with trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. And since we chose our neighborhood mainly for the giant wooded lot sizes it was a lot of walking to get to each house. Half the kids gave up early and were escorted home while I took the truly serious candy hunters on the full neighborhood loop. We had two matching Pikachus and an Ash Ketchum, a Link, a butterfly, and a dragon who changed his mind at the last minute and transformed himself into a wizard. This is why our five and under crowd almost exclusively make their costumes on the day of Halloween by rummaging through the costume box.
Fickle. That's what they are.
Now, it's difficult enough to get a decent picture of six kids at once on any given regular day--trying to do it right before the most spectacularly candy filled night of the year is just impossible. I tried, but this was the best shot of the disappointing bunch. And the only picture I got of wizard Christopher was blurry. He was actually a much cuter wizard than he was a giant three year old who squeezed himself into an 18-24 month sized dragon costume but I was not going to argue with a crazed red headed toddler who decided he was definitely going to wear a tiny costume. I pick my battles more carefully than that.
I'm fairly anti Pokemon as a rule, mostly because I dislike adults marketing things to children that they then need to collect indefinitely. I mean, the tagline is literally "gotta catch 'em all." Anyway, there was pretty much zero chance I was going to give the franchise my dollars by buying actual Pokemon costumes from the store so they can continue to convince my children that they will never be able to be happy until they have indeed caught them all. But when your nine year old desperately wants to have a matching costume with his baby brother you kind of need to make that happen, yes? I found some yellow shirts and hats and attached tails and ears and Henry could not have been more excited. The delight was palpable with every shake of his lightning bolt tail. The yellows weren't all exactly Pikachu yellow, but I suppose we found the silver lining of the boys' color deficient status because Henry totally couldn't tell that the yellows didn't match.
They were pretty much the cutest thing I've ever seen. Well, beside Margaret and her pipe cleaner antennae.
Adorable.
No one wanted to dress up as saints the next day for the All Saints Day mass but we did get donuts at the local donut shop which were very festive and delicious. What could a bunch of children hyped up on a dragon hoard of candy need but to top themselves off with sugary baked goods? A feast day is a feast day so......
On All Souls Day we met up with some friends at a nearby Catholic cemetery to pray for the souls of the dead and then, since we have family buried nearby, we swung by that cemetery afterwards to pray there as well. We hadn't ever done this before but the children did surprisingly well. Our friend printed out prayer cards with the Eternal Rest prayer on one side and a place to write the names of the people you want to remember this month on the other and everyone was as reverent as could be expected for their various ages. Meaning that Christopher was minimally reverent. The fact that we brought soul cakes to trade with each other afterwards might have helped keep everyone on track as well.
It was really a great three days. Now we just need to make a plan to get rid of the giant stash of candy. In the past we've bought most of it back from the children--paying by the ounce--and then disappeared the candy by taking it in to Chris' office. This year no one wanted to sell.
Touché children. Touché.