Aarrrgghhh, is the candy gone already?

Note: In a radical departure from my strict blogging policy, this Halloween post is brought to you just a few days after Halloween, rather than my usual 3 month lag time. Don't be too alarmed, however, it's likely to never happen again. Look for our Christmas post sometime in April 2010. 

 The theme this year was 2 pirates, their pirate monkey, and the monkey's pink-haired lady trainer. I somehow convinced Mia and Sam to wear the same pirate costume this year, and lucky for me they both fit into a size 4 boy's costume, since all the skanky pirate costumes for 6 year old girls were sold out. We take any opportunity for free candy pretty seriously, and so the kids have spent the past few weeks "getting into character" to prepare for the big day. This involved referring to everyone and everything as "matey," wearing their pirate costumes almost non-stop, unruly demands for snacks, a sharp decline in proper hygiene practices, general pillaging, plundering, and of course, lots and lots of swashbuckling. All in all, not too different than normal, though I was constantly reminded of a particularly regrettable episode of Wifeswap that featured a pirate-obsessed family and the outright abuse of the word pirattitude (which is to say, any usage at all). So basically, I've spent way too much time lately thinking about one of the worst hours on television ever.

But I digress...

In the picture above, we are about to go trick or treating at a local assisted living center. Don't we look so happy? Well, somewhere in that old folks home, we not only collected a year's supply of butterscotch, peppermint, and cinnamon candies, but also something that looked and smelled suspiciously like diarrhea on Sam's pumpkin. We were too busy gagging and saying bad words to take pictures of how happy we were about that. Needless to say, that effectively began and ended our tradition of trick or treating with the old folks.

More trick or treating festivities (with a thoroughly cleaned pumpkin). What I love about this picture is that Sam and Nate have almost identical expressions, though one is smiling and the other is screaming.

 And what would Halloween be without a little post-Halloween hairpiece swap?

 We spent the evening with some friends whose attempt to buy a house had turned into a true Halloween nightmare, which we metaphorically recreated in our attempt to build a haunted gingerbread house. It looks way better in the picture-- you can't even tell that the walls aren't plumb and the roof is caved in in two places.

(Good luck Jen and family. We will miss you!)

And this is completely unrelated to Halloween, but Sam got a hold of my camera recently and these are some of the pictures he took. Turns out he's a way better photographer than me.

  

I'm not used to such artsy pictures on my blog, and it makes it difficult to know how to end this post. I feel like I should be all deep and introspective or something.

Ummmm, yeah, I got nothing.

Hope you had a fun and poop-free Halloween.