Halloweeeeeen!

Halloween. Ok. Clean the pumpkins.

Cut the pumpkins.

Pull out all the goop.

Eleanor painted her pumpkin every single color of paint she had

until it was straight-up just black.

Joel carved an owl into his, I glued a bunch of plastic flies onto mine, Geneva rolled hers around the room until I stuck some eyeballs into it. I can't believe I didn't get pictures of any of this, I'm totally slipping. But then we had pumpkin seeds!

Geneva had cheerios because she still only has like seven teeth, and then spent ten minutes putting her bowl on her knee and going, 'HAT!'

I modge podged Eleanor's pumpkin so the paint wouldn't run off, and then let her stick jewels all over it and she was being so careful, big jewel little jewel big jewel little jewel, and I didn't get a picture of the finished product of that, either.

And then it rained and all the jewels washed off. 'It's ok, mum, I can stick them back on again!'

We should all be such as Eleanor.

She looks like she's wearing eyeliner in that first jewelling picture because we had just done a test-run of our costumes to make sure we had everything.

Look at that leetle gargoyle, she's like a tiny, terrifying angel. Geneva was so excited to be a pigeon.

'Lemme tweak your horns.'

Highly recommend mirrors for hilarious photos of kids looking at themselves.

And then the girls ran around the yard like loons because they were so high on themselves and their costumes and the beautiful day.

The gargoyle was obviously WAAAAY too much work to put on and off for costume day at dance, and at school, and both places had specifically requested 'no scary costumes' which is why Eleanor wore that dragon suit like every day for a week. Geneva wore HERS because she'd see Eleanor getting dressed up and start nodding really hard and signing 'please' and nodding some more. That kid hates to get dressed but she loves to get dressed UP. The only place I didn't let them wear their dragons was to the hay bale maze, because SO MUCH HAY. So prickly.

Josie couldn't come because of a stomach bug, delaying my dreams of getting all five (FIVE!) of our kids in one picture, but she sent her boys with her mum and the girls had a whale of a time regardless.

We went to a Halloween party on Friday night, and I dressed as a witch because we hadn't planned on going and then I wasn't going to wear a costume and at the last second I threw on some stuff I owned and Eleanor's witch had and the girls were my dragon-familiars and I felt LAME because I love dressing up but all of my costume-energies had been expended.

BUT the party was a blast and Eleanor ate her weight in chocolate-covered strawberries. Geneva ate an olive.

Halloween came! The sun shone! Eleanor has been hit or miss with napping lately (I realize that it's insane that my almost-four-year-old still naps most days but I will ride this wave into the ground) and on Halloween she tried SO HARD to nap so that she could be 'all fresh, so we can stay out LATE and get EVEN MORE TREATS.' It took her like two hours to fall asleep but she did it. There were trick-or-treaters coming up behind me while I was trying to get a shot of the girls on the porch, damn them, so all my pictures are a variant on THIS:

Hilarious little idiots. They just killed it this year, Eleanor has the routine down pat and Geneva just repeats whatever Eleanor does. 'Trick or treat!' 'Teeeeeet!' And then they get candy and the grown-up says, Oh, are you a bat? And Eleanor says NO I am a GARgoyle ROWRRRRR and then Geneva rowrs, too, and then Eleanor says 'Thank you, happy Halloween!' and Geneva says, 'Weeeeeeen!'

Good job, my little beasties. Happy Halloween.