GIJOE Meets Miss Butterfly

Among the 3-5 countdowns we have in the fall, Halloween lands pleasantly between Jack's birthday and Grace's birthday. It is a tweener celebration for the two kids that they can anticipate with equal passion. And in all honesty, it is less about the costumes and all about the candy. So much so, that it wasn't until the 30th that we started seriously thinking about what each child wanted to be.

After checking out the the horrible costumes at Wal-mart, I quickly made a pact with myself that whatever we found, it would be something the kids could wear later. Inspired by rainbow butterfly wings, we searched out a cool shirt that kept with the butterfly theme for Grace. Jack has had recent interest in GIJOE, and with camo gear all over Wal-mart this was an easy and fun costume to pull together.

After dipping into Mom's old make up, and sitting in the make up chair, the kids were more than ready to hit the block.


Faith wasn't big enough to fit into Jack's two year old gorilla suit, so she decided to just be herself. Mama is as exhausted and oily as she looks:


Jack's camo was so effective that at one point, Ken and I both thought we lost him, and Ken took off running to locate the lost boy. But Jack was just across the street, in perfect disguise under the shadows.

Jack really was the hoot. How things have changed over just one year. Last year he was a mute, and his sister's shadow, but this year he would take off running and ditch his sister for the next house. When she was ready to go home, he spent another 20 minutes hitting more houses. Unbeknownst to the treat giver, Jack would secretly observe the treat giving exchange, and report back his observations such as: "Do you know what? When I said 'Thank You', he didn't even say 'You're welcome'!" or "Did you know he told me I was VERY welcome!". And houses that did not show an effort with Halloween decorating, we're bypassed for houses with lighted pumpkins.

I'm really glad that Halloween turned out as well as it did. Do you remember last year's fiasco with our brilliant idea to buy small pumpkins? Well, this year, was even worse. I decided we'd make a fun day out of our pumpkin carving on the 31st, and start out by going to a local store and selecting our pumpkins...sure we'd buy them for a steal of a price. Instead, I discovered that our town apparently had a shortage of pumpkins, and there wasn't a pumpkin to be found in the entire town. The kids and I, eyed up the squash, but I was afraid we'd have the same problem we did with the small pumpkins...so they settled for pumpkin cupcakes with purple frosting, and a CARS activity book. Will I ever get the stupid pumpkin carving right???