Happy Halloween?

Can I make a confession here? There are very few things that I hate, but I'm afraid that I hate Halloween. I hate the candy overload. I hate the scary, spooky, ugly, decaying decorations. I hate that Satan has his own holiday and it's bigger than Christmas. I hate spending hours (and hours) creating costumes so my kids will be as cute as the neighbors' kids, only to have my very cute kids chuck the costumes at the last minute and wear something that was in the dress-up box already.

However, they almost always come up with great ideas from the box, so maybe what I should start doing is this: I'll tell them I've worked for many, many hours perfecting the best family of themed costumes ever and that we're going to be the hit of the season. Then they will get to work fifteen minutes before trick-or-treat time and make themselves dazzling with whatever they find wrinkled up in the basement.

Hey -- I may be on to something here...

So this year, the homemade costume line-up is as follows:
Ellie is a vampire, costume from the dress-ups, teeth $.65, white-face make-up $.75
Katie is a Star-Bellied Sneech, ala Dr. Seuss, costume -- my yellow t-shirt and hoodie, borrowed yellow sweats, paper star and funky hair.
Jana is a princess, wearing Grandma Bolton's gorgeous silvery formal from the '50s and a pair of fake eyelashes $2.99
Matthew is a Newsie, specifically Les, the small cute one. He's wearing his own brown pants and shoes, a long-sleeved shirt, a vest from the dress-up box, and Kate's brown corduroy hat. I didn't even have to buy a newspaper for him to hawk (**cough, cough** "Buy me last pape, lady?") because there was one in the garage.

Happy Halloween, anyway!