Trick or Treat..........

That's my boys!

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. As a fat kid, I loved Halloween for the candy. Then as a college student, I loved being able to dress up in ridiculously hilarious costumes. (Some were better than others, of course. But I think Jesus may have been my favorite. Surprisingly, no one wanted to drink with Jesus, though. And no one wanted to pick up a hitchhiking Jesus at 3:30am either. Weird.)

And for the last couple of years, Halloween has been an excuse for Rach and I to go out in public in as little clothing as possible. (while going to grown up parties, of course. Not while we're trick-or-treating with the kids. Although there was definitely a lot of that going on around the neighborhood. I think 'slutty mom' was the costume of choice this year.)

And Halloween remains my favorite holiday because we still get lots of candy (still a fat kid at heart), we get to dress the kids up (always funny), and it's over by 9:30 (did I mention how old I've become?). The problem that I have with Halloween now is that it starts way too early. We had kids come to our door as early as 4:30! 4:30? That's ridiculous. If you're worried about getting your kids to bed on time, then stop trick-or-treating earlier. But don't make my kids feel like they're running late by bringing your stupid kids to my house at 4:30. I don't need the collective anxiety in my house to go up because your pansy son in the Thomas the Train costume goes nighty night at 6:30. Okay, I'm done. Sorry about that. Just had to get that off my chest. And I apologize if your kid went dressed up as Thomas the Train. I'm sure it was cute.

Anyway, on to our costumes. I think they all came out pretty good.

The Boys

Cole recycled my Leonides costume from last year, and I think he made some improvements. He definitely classed it up a little from last year's version.

Like Father, Like Son........well, sort of

Gavin went as a skull motorcycle rider, but it was pretty hot outside and he got pretty sweaty pretty quickly. Then he took his jacket off. So within 20 minutes of dressing up, Gavin went as 'Gavin With Gloves'. Jaxon went as the Incredible Hulk. He had been sick all week, and hadn't really started to feel better yet, so he was extremely reluctant to let me paint his face. Finally, in order to get the make up on his face, I didn't tell him what I was doing; I simply acted like I was brushing something off of his face.....repeatedly. Then he asked, "What you doing, Daddy?" So I showed him a mirror, and he got all excited about having a "Geen Face!" And if you don't think that I was thiiiiiiiiss close to painting myself green and matching Jaxon's Incredible Hulk costume, then you don't know me very well. I decided against it because I could never compete with his abs. I mean, he's even shredded up while he's sitting down:

Is it bad to be jealous of
your 2 year old's costume?

So Cole, Gavin, Jaxon, my parents, and I started going through the neighborhood trick-or-treating. Cole and Gavin were complaining a little bit about Jaxon slowing us down, so we decided to let my parents take Jax while I took the boys. Within 10 minutes of being on our own, the boys started complaining, "My feet hurt." and "It's too hot." and "This mask stinks." and "Do we have to walk the whole time?" So we headed back toward our house. And on our journey, one of the houses had this giant inflatable cemetery thingamajig. It was huge, and had an archway that you had to walk through to get to the door. As I was waiting for the boys on the sidewalk, I see the cemetery move up and down out of the corner of my eye. I look over, and there's Cole faceplanting into the grass. Then I look over at the lady still standing by the door, and she yells out, "Oooh, I'm sorry. There's a few ropes in the yard!" Cole then proceeds to get up and fall back down on his face about 9,000 times. It took him 20 minutes to get out of her yard. It was like watching Stevie Wonder go through an army obstacle course. Gavin and I just stood there and watched in amazement. High comedy.

Scarlett

Scarlett went as a witch. But she didn't want to go as just any witch. She wanted to go as a dead witch, so I had to do her makeup. And when it comes to doing someone's makeup, I'm about as useful as Obama in a toll booth. (Get it? Can't make change? C'mon that's pretty good, right?) So here's Doonie's before picture:

That is one sassy witch. Where's the Gucci broom?

And the after picture:

I seriously missed my calling. Because if I can make
someone as pretty as Doonie look like this....

The funny thing is, I didn't actually do her lipstick. I finished her makeup, but she said she still wanted to look pretty. So she put on some hooker red lipstick. Nice.

Tori

Tori didn't want to dress up at first. She said she was too cool for school. (Okay, she didn't actually say that. I said that. But she's getting to that age where she's juuussst about too old to trick-or-treat.) But then I told her that if she didn't dress up, then she didn't go trick-or-treating. AND her Uncle Keith told her that if she didn't dress up, then he wasn't going to get her an LSU shirt like he had promised. So this led to Tori and a couple of her friends scrambling around for last minute costumes. They decided to go with 'dead softball players'. So my dad cut a few softballs in half, we tied the half softballs to their heads, I masterfully painted their faces, and voila! Dead softball players. Although the softballs didn't last too long on their heads.

Without the softballs, they ended up looking like
Tammy Fay Baker at a charity softball game.

Racheal and Maxine

Rach and Maxine stayed behind at our house to pass out candy and decided to have a little fun of their own. They hung a giant black sheet of paper over our porch to make everything really really dark. Then they put a strobe light behind it to make it kind of creepy. Then they put one of our barstools on the porch with a candy bowl on top. Then they crouched behind the front door and front window and waited for people to walk up to the house. Whenever someone would reach into the candy bowl, Rach and Maxine would scream as loud as they could and bang on the door and the window. And I'm not talking about just a normal little scream. I mean, these chicks were brutally loud. (By the way, I think Racheal and Maxine screaming to scare people is a little like putting horns on a crocodile. Aren't they scary enough? Couldn't Racheal just as easily have opened the door and done the crazy, one eyebrow raised look she gives the kids?) Anyway, they were scaring the ever loving crap out of people. As I walked up to the house, there was a rather largish woman at the candy bowl. Rach and Max started screaming their lungs out, and Rach reached through the window and grabbed the lady's arm. She turned around and Usain Bolted her ass out of there so fast that she knocked over three little kids on her way to the street. There ended up being a congregation of people outside our house with people saying to each other, "You go. No, you go. I'm not going. You go." It was absolutely hilarious. Just one more reason to love Halloween.