Little Monsters

Brady and his buds.

Brady, Riley, and Natalie.

Brady initially wanted to be a mummy. That's the easiest costume next to "ghost", right? Apparently not for me. I couldn't find a white sheet to save my life (that didn't cost $34) and then after a frantic night of sewing gauze onto long-johns (and a 11pm trip to Wal-Mart to buy out the last of their gauze) it was a huge flop. It looked terrible. So when Brady woke up in the morning we convinced him to be a Vampire. 3rd easiest costume: black clothes, fangs, and a cape. And if you want to be really fancy, white face, black hair and blood. So we did the really fancy.

Natalie had picked out her Tinkerbell Adventure costume the second they hit the shelves back in August. But upon looking at the packaging, it shows only the bust of Tink, and she's wearing a blade of grass for a hat! There is no hat in the costume package! Natalie really felt the need for the hat, so my mom the crafting-guru created her a custom grass hat.

I had to work all day on Halloween (NOT cool) and it was of course crazy-busy (did you know Halloween was a huge shopping day?) I got home in plenty of time to help the kids get dressed and I actually got to take them trick-or-treating this year (usually an honor left to dad).

This year Brady (with tag-a-long Natalie) had made plans to trick-or-treat with some buddies, and it was so fun to watch them run from house to house frantically and then talking excitedly between homes. And they remembered their manners! Natalie kept up for about 2 streets before she started pre-qualifying the houses: 'That driveway was to steep, that house was too spooky, that house handed out Otter Pops... wait! That house handed out Otter Pops?! Go back! I want an Otter Pop! '

She pooped out so Brady continued on with his buddies while Nat and I headed for home (don't get all judgemental on me, there was another mom with the boys! I'm not that free range!) Larry headed down shortly after to pick up Brady and said when he walked in, all the boys had their piles out on the carpet taking inventory. I never did that as a kid, mostly because I lived in the woods and didn't have anyone to swap with. A perk of being a city-kid, I guess.

And we couldn't have bought our candy more perfectly, we ended up with about 15 pieces left over, the perfect amount to munch without feeling guilty. Of course I hadn't planned on Larry's poker buddies coming over the next night. All my candy was snatched by bachelors. Dangit.