me, my redhead, and so on: scenes from a halloween

Halloween. It's now a real thing because I have kids old enough to realize they can dress up and oh the possibilities and can I wear my costume now forever today tonight can I sleep in it.

The bun hair do - which is most close to Periwinkle's - hurt her head.
So she went with pretty curls for the other outings.

They each chose their costumes months ago - and miraculously, they each stuck with their idea. Annabelle insisted on being Periwinkle, Tinker Bell's sister. I started looking for this costume about four months ago. I found it online once - but in a too tiny size. And then I could find super fancy homemade ones if I was prepared to mortgage my house to pay for it. And I could find about forty billion Tinker Bell costume varieties. But no Periwinkle. One day my sister-in-law sent me a link with an I FOUND IT! Miracle! It was in the UK, sold through ebay, and I clicked BUY IT NOW immediately.

We've had these small swords for a while now.
Lou has them hidden - literally - and when Jess starts wrestling,
she'll disappear and come running out screaming,
sword in hand. It's kind of awesome.

Lou is not just a viking. She's Hiccup. From the movie, How to Train Your Dragon. She's not Astrid, the female lead. She's Hiccup, the male lead. And she instructed me months ago that I was to be Toothless (his dragon). Her costume was an Amazon.com find, and I did indeed track down a cheap little Toothless Beanie to play her pet dragon. And Target's dollar spot provided an excellent sword and shield.

This little group of kindergarteners is pretty fabulous.
So grateful she got such a fun class and the most perfect teacher.

For a holiday that I put very little importance on (what are we celebrating really?) and try to downplay as much as I can, we managed to get some serious mileage out of those costumes. These photos are from multiple Halloween outings, including the ward trunk or treat, visits (plural - both in costume) at Gram's, the kindergarten Halloween party (I'm the room parent = pipe cleaner crafts galore!), Halloween at the Zoo, and regular ol' trick or treating.

I really think Halloween is a dumb day. But I can't get enough of these babies. They were so proud and happy and full of sugar. FULL OF SUGAR. So happy they were so happy.