It was a Graveyard Smash!

So, I've decided to make one post about our week-long Halloween festivities. To begin, the week before Halloween, Claire's school has a "fall parade" (the PC term for "Halloween parade." PLEASE! What is this world coming to? People can swear on network television but we can't say Halloween or Christmas! I mean come on!). The parade is so fun to watch. The kids, dressed in their costumes, are led by the marching band from the high school all around the school. It's great. Claire wanted to be Batgirl this year. Well, actually, she wanted to be She-Ra but I didn't want to make a costume, and since Cole was going to be Batman I asked her if she'd like to be Batgirl, hoping another girl superhero would suffice. To my relief, she was ecstatic at the thought (whew!) so we found one online, although, as you'll see in the pictures, it couldn't be a black costume. It had to be pink and sparkly. She's still a princess at heart, just one with a cape. The only problem with buying one online, though, was that it didn't come in time for the school parade. Claire, though, was fine with being a fairy for the school parade and Batgirl for everything else (whew, again!). She even let me curl her hair, which usually is quite the battle, so we were off to a good start! I dressed Ava and Cole in their pumpkin shirts for the day. Here's a shot of Ava emptying out the dishwasher for me, showing that even though she's a cute li'l punkin', she's also a li'l stinker at the same time.

("Who, me?")

Here's Claire before school:

That afternoon after naps, Cole and Ava and I went to Claire's school for the parade. To my delight, Ava kept her hat on for a little while.

Cole insisted he wear his costume to the parade (although he didn't want to wear his cape and he was cold so he is wearing my corduroy jacket).

Waiting for the fun to start:

And, they're off!

Claire walked with Olivia, her "Book Buddy" (a school program where a third grader is assigned to a kindergartner and reads books with them once a week).

Claire and Cole didn't wave when they saw each other, they pointed at each other:

Our next costume-opportunity was our church's ward Halloween party. Claire had her Batgirl costume by then, luckily, so we were all set. Ava was supposed to be Catwoman; however, it is the sad truth of a third child's existence that they do not always get the attention that their elder siblings got at the same age. So, I didn't have time to draw a nose and whiskers on her and planned to do it once we got to the party. But, by the time we got there I couldn't get her to keep her ears on anyway, so it kinda seemed pointless. So here's the only shot I got of her in full feline attire. Poor thing - if she was my first I'd have thousands of pictures of her on her first Halloween.

Here's the other two members of Gotham's gang. You'll notice the Batman costume came complete with a six-pack.

The rest of the night was full of playing ghouly games and trick-or-treating through the halls of the church.

Our ear-less, whisker-less and altogether neglected Catwoman (yes, it doesn't even look like she's dressed up at all):

Next, was trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. Notice I didn't add "on Halloween." Milwaukee has the oddest, most un-American way of doing Halloween. Everyone goes trick-or-treating the Sunday before Halloween at 1-4 p.m. I've heard it's because the city was having problems with crime on Halloween and this apparently helped reduce it. However, they're obviously overlooking THE CRIME they've created of children not trick-or-treating on Halloween at night, when jack-o'-lanterns are lit and spookiness is in the air! It's an outrage, I say! But, the years that we don't have church in the afternoon we have gone during this time because it's fun for the kids to go when all the activity is going on around the neighborhood. So, here are pics from our trick-or-treating (I will say the ONLY nice thing about having Halloween during the daylight is that you can get some pictures of trick-or-treating in action).

Part of being a good female super-hero is knowing how to pose:

I left Ava in her dress from church and stuck her ears on. It took all of two seconds for her to pull them off and start eating them:

I did, however, get some sweet shots of her with her daddy:

And one of her discovering what Halloween is all about:

Our last Halloween "fun-itivity" was family night. We carved the pumpkins the kids picked from the pumpkin patch and made Halloween sugar cookies. Our kitchen was a complete disaster after this! But, it was so much fun - the stuff memories are made of. Here's the kids decorating their cookies.

Betchya can't tell which two Claire decorated and which two Cole decorated!

(You can't tell in the picture, but there's about 10 pounds of frosting on top of those last two cookies!)

The kids could not WAIT to light the pumpkins - they thought it was the coolest thing EVER! We had so much fun and the kids are already talking about what they want to be for Halloween next year!