Halloween, kind of.

Josh and Ben were incredibly excited for Halloween.  Whenever Ben would see a pumpkin he would squeal 'allowee!' and point.  Josh asked about trick or treating for a month.  When the actual night came around, things turned out not so cool.  The boys didn't want to wear the costumes.  We got about five houses in (with long walks between homes because no one was apparently giving out candy on our street) when it started to sprinkle.  We found out that Ben is TERRIFIED of anyone wearing a mask.  When it started sprinkling I sent David home with Sam, which made the boys really mad and the didn't want to trick or treat anymore.  So I picked up screaming Ben and hauled the lot of them home and we passed out candy to neighborhood kids (and a surprising amount of adults.)

Luckily we had a more positive experience with our church's Halloween party the previous weekend.  I had to bribe Josh into wearing his costume and had to put it on in stages for him to tolerate it, but in the end it all worked out fairly well.  We did a family Star Wars theme.

I tried to take some pictures of all my boys.  You can guess how that turned out.

David, stop playing light sabers and get over here for a picture.

 OK, Darth Vader Ben can't see, someone adjust his hat.

Ben, please sit down so we can take a picture.

I'm pretty sure my previous instructions weren't "please whack your brother in the head with your light saber."

At this point I gave up with the boys.

 My handsome Sith Lord.  (home made costume, thanks Mom for sewing the robe)

Channeling my inner Han Solo.  I made the holster myself.  And yes, I see that it is a cutlas in there, but I didn't have a blaster and didn't want to spend money to buy one.

 

The cutest Yoda EVER.  He's still wearing the hat when we go out and he gets so many compliments.

I'm pretty proud of how good our costumes turned out!

 

The boys had a good time going to the decorated trunks of people's cars collecting candy and it wasn't scary at all for the little ones.  I'm really glad they got in at least one positive Halloween trick or treating endeavor.

The next item to check off the "we need to do this for the children" holiday list was carving pumpkins.  Except we just did one, because the boys ended up not wanting to touch it at all.

 Happy Halloween!