Halloween!

I kind of miss having little kids who I can talk into whatever adorable themed costumes I want. But I love that my kids usually go for themed costumes all by themselves, with no coercion (since they started picking their costumes, we had a Harry Potter year and then a Mario, Luigi, and Wa-Luigi year). This year they all wanted to be characters from Hetalia. Hetalia is some sort of Japanese anime type thing, and my kids (particularly Ari) are very into it. That's about all I know. Oh--I also know that you have to order the costumes from some overseas company and pay a lot of money for very low quality stuff. Yay! Either that or you have to have stronger sewing or thrifting powers than I have.

And they all declared this year the best Halloween ever, so I guess I will have to accept their happiness as a substitute for the overwhelming adorableness of Halloweens past.

Ari was America, Milo was China, and Gus was Japan.

....and Fiesta was the horse that the Headless Horseman rides. 

First up on Halloween, we had a party at LEO, the place where the kids take classes. And that evening, because we live in a Real Neighborhood now, there was a pre-trick or treating costume parade for all the neighborhood kids. Our friends came over to join us for that:

Then we made our way around our neighborhood collecting candy. Two people wanted to take Fiesta's picture, which kind of made up for my lack of a dressed up baby or toddler. Next year! I'll have a dressed up dog AND a baby.

After finishing off our (small; only about 60 houses, and a lot of them didn't have lights on) neighborhood, we headed down the street to our friends' neighborhood, met up with some more friends, and hit all the houses there (after touring my friend Tracy's awesome haunted house on her porch. I wish I had pictures of that). Then after a brief candy-swapping session, we all came home, very tired and full of sugar.

We were a little late with pumpkin carving this year, but it did finally happen, a few days before Halloween.

We opted for Sparky, from Frankenweenie, using a template we found at Mommy Musings.