A Halloween Warm-up

This past Saturday, the village hosted a county-wide Halloween celebration. There was a buffet at the restaurant, a dance at the bar, trunk-or-treat for the kids, and a costume contest for everyone.

So of course we had to go. And of course the boys had to wear their costumes.

This year, Cubby wanted to be a samurai. I originally was all, "I am not buying another costume. We have a box full of costumes. I can totally make a samurai costume out of cardboard."

Yeah. I bought the costume.

But! I did make him a sword to go with it. Along with a jet pack for Jack's astronaut costume and a dagger for Charlie's Army soldier costume, both of which we already had. In addition, I made Charlie into a "special ops" soldier by sticking some branches on his helmet and blacking his face with a mixture of ash (from burning a piece of paper) and olive oil.

Cubby's costume came with a really weird monster-looking mask. He said he was a skeleton samurai. Whatever.

I made Jack turn around so the jet pack was visible. I'm way too proud of that jet pack.

Poppy wore the lamb coat first worn by Cubby and then by Jack. (Charlie was too small his first Halloween and too big his second, so he never wore it.)

Terrible photo, but here they all are.

Poppy was my prop for my costume. I stuck on a name tag that said, "Hello! My name is Mary."

Get it? Yeah. That's as good as it gets for me and costumes.

And apparently, this is as good as it gets with my phone taking pictures. What is up with this?

Cubby actually missed the costume contest because it was so chaotic we didn't realize his age group was up, and neither Jack nor Charlie won, but they all had a great time anyway.

And now we get to do it all again for trick-or-treating on actual Halloween. What could be better than two opportunities to dress up and achieve a sugar high? Lucky kids.