Here at long last I finally don’t write the Halloween post.  Seriously, we’re only 6 days past Halloween.  We only just today had to throw our out moldy pumpkins today, and we’ve barely made a dent on our candy.  I mean, uhmm, THEY have barely made a dent on THEIR candy.  Right.

So anyway, I can, at least, offer the first glimpse (well, the 50th or so if you fallow Malin’s blog) of the boys in their Halloween costumes.  So, here’s Nicholas the Tigger and Dexter the Giraffe:

On Saturday morning, the 30th, we dressed the boys in their costumes and packed them into Kanga for a Fall Harvest Festival with the SNOMOMs group.  It’s been hard work, harvesting all of our acreage.  I think we had something like 18 apples this year!  The boys were surprisingly cooperative.  Nic LOVES tigger, and we bribed Dex into his costume with a few minutes of Cars, and a couple of Jelly Bellies.  It’s always the Jelly Bellies…

When we arrived, the ever talented Anna was taking photos.  We waited patiently in line, and used up our last couple of Jelly Bellies bribing the boys into standing next to one another.  No amount of bribery would secure a smile, however…  Perhaps photoshop?

One thing we noticed was how clever people were with themed costumes.  Knights escorting their twin Princess, or the Cat in the Hat with Thing 1 and Thing 2, and the cleverest, little Bo Peep watching her two little lambs.  If only we had an extra sibling or two we could really get creative.  Well, until the boys refuse to indulge us any longer, anyway.  I wonder what age “cute” has to give way to “cool”?

They had arts and crafts tables set up, and the boys spent a short while coloring.

And I had to include the following shot.  In looking over our photos for the year it became painfully obvious that we take very few of ourselves, only ever the boys, so I’m making it a point to document that we’re actually present at each event, even if only as assistants and shadows.

After the coloring we discovered the donuts.  Perhaps it was a mistake to allow Nicholas to choose one with frosting, but he certainly seemed to enjoy it, and at least the frosting was orange.

More gratuitous frosting images:

They also had a few buckets with candy and small toys in them, and the boys loved the pack of Cars-themed Go-Fish cards.  They were also a little intimidated by the hordes of children running around, so we grabbed some chairs against the wall and played quietly for a few minutes to build up our courage.

It doesn’t take long for Nic to start exploring.  Well, Dex always runs off first, but once Nic gets started there’s no stopping him.  The only problem being when Katie thought I was right behind her and told Nic to “go find your Daddy”, but I’d actually walked off with Dexter and was half way across the room, and a minute or so later Nicholas was scared and crying, but we found him before any other mothers tried to make off with him.

We found another craft project – this time affixing stickers to a foam-type board.  This was quite the hit for a while, and the left over stickers came home and were affixed to our windows instead.

After the grafts were complete, we started a grand parade of kiddos.  The parade didn’t go so well as we ended going down a one-way alley, but no one was killed.  And this gave Anna time to get everyone set up for a group shot, and conveniently dumped the children all out at the same point.  Katie snuck around the side to capture her own version of the shot (which turned out to be convenient since we haven’t seen any of Anna’s pictures yet), which worked great until the boys noticed her and started screaming.

And afterwards the boys collapsed in exhaustion, asleep before we’d made it a mile.

A pretty good start to Halloween weekend, right?  Well, if everything works out, we should have the real Halloween post up tomorrow.  Sorry for dragging it out, but we’ve got to do it right, afterall.  I’d hate for you to think that we just dumped the boys in costumes and started working the neighborhood, without spending weeks building up to the event.  What kind of parents do you think we are???