Happy Halloween

Once again, the kids chose weird obscure costumes! This year, they made good on all of their group-costume brainstorming & picked something they could all dress up as together. They are the calamity trio from the cartoon Amphibia. Inspiration photo: 

The leaves in the hair (of the middle character above) seem very on-brand for Leah, as does the one missing shoe. Nana Jana bought them armor, cloaks and weapons and we scrounged the rest from things we had. Since it was a school night, we skipped the hair dye. (& James is blonde anyway.)  This is him putting things together for a practice run. My boots, Sam's vest and belt, a giant t-shirt cut into a tunic from the clearance rack at walmart & a headband worn as a crown (type thing). 

Very, very unfortunately and super disappointingly, we had to cancel last-minute with our friends who've come to eat supper (soup) and do the neighborhood Halloween stuff for ages because Leah'd had a cold earlier in the week and then Sam came down with it worse & we didn't want to share germs with their toddler - if it wasn't so blasted cold, the rest of us could have just walked around with them outside. Probably because it was so cold, we got a steady stream of trick-or-treaters starting really early in the day - we ran out of candy about 8:30 and turned out the light. 

How'd they do recreating the photo? 

Here's James in his final product. We put his flashlight on a loop around his belt. 

Amelie wore her flashlight duct-taped to her wristlet. 

Leah drew the felt leaves for her hair & stuck them to hair clips. She also wanted to wear just one shoe & a sock (to match the character) and I said absolutely not. So then she came up with the brilliant plan to pull one of dad's socks OVER her shoe, so it just looked like she had one sock foot. She's wearing about 3 layers of clothes (to avoid putting a coat over her masterpiece) and said she could hardly walk. 

We also carved pumpkins and roasted the seeds. Amelie's pumpkin:   

Leah's pumpkin (she carved it herself, but then asked me to "fix" the eyes and help with the hole-poking and the teeth, which she had this weird strategy for - I think she'd watched a video about it). 

James did some fine work here - and all 3 kids were much more creative than the grownups. 

Mine's on the far left & then Sam's. 

Sam wore my spider hat from last year & I bought an LED light up hat with orange tentacles (somehow not pictured) in order to be visible while walking around the neighborhood. 

Several of the houses around us go ALL OUT - including the yard of the month right around the corner from us:

They have an instagram page. The kids also wanted to make sure to go visit their music teacher from school, who passes out cookies and treat bags to her students who come by. I'd made chicken chili for supper, which James wasn't a big fan of, but he ate a bowl of chili at one of the houses that was throwing a neighborhood party. He went on trick-or-treating after the girls gave up/got cold, wanting to fill up his pillowcase maybe. I saw one family riding around in a golf cart. Oh, and also, James got a CAN OF SODA from a house - not sure if that was totally planned or a last-minute fix. He also got a fistful of Korean candy from some international students having a party.

Link to last year for comparison.