All Hallow's Eve

This year Halloween fell on a Sunday. For us that means festivities must take place on another night. For the first time since we moved here, 8 years ago, none of our surrounding neighborhoods hosted trick-or-treating on the night before Halloween. That made the kids ESPECIALLY grateful for the trunk-or-treating party that our church held a few days prior.

So - this year for Halloween we had:

Gabriel - some sort of creepy looking thing, complete with claws he fashioned from paper

Katrina - an empress

Abagail - Princess Leah

Simon - a pirate

Oliver - Luke Skywalker

Amelia - Tigger

Joshua - a kitten

Most of these photos were taken on Halloween. Even though we didn't go out the kids still wanted to dress up again. So for our family night activity they put on their costumes and had a birthday celebration for Gabriel.

After opening presents the kids got dressed in pj's and headed for bed. I think they wore their costumes for all of 30 minutes. It was a bit of work for such a short time, but worth it to them for sure. Gabriel was the only one who did face paint. Then he tried to scrub it off with soap in the shower - with no mirror. This was professional face paint from my theatre days. So, #1 it was old and #2 it doesn't scrub off real well with plain soap and water. Better with a wash cloth, even better with Vaseline, best with special soap - which I no longer have anyway. But Gabriel insisted to do it his way. He looked a bit pasty and ill with dark circles under his eyes the next day or two at school until it finally wore off completely.