Halloween

I promised a couple grandmas that I would send Halloween pictures, so I'm going to play a little game of catch up before moving on to more current events. Allow me to take you back to mid October and pumpkin carving:

Jonah was the only one willing to touch the stuff until the other kids saw that it was safe. After they warmed up to it, it ended up all over the back porch and yard. I had to scrub it off the screen door and, at last count, I had thirty-two pumpkin vines sprouting up in the back lawn.
Here they are with the finished products:
Jonah chose this pattern... and I carved it.
Andy chose this pattern... and I carved it:
It didn't matter which pattern Ben chose because his pumpkin was so hard I couldn't carve it. Instead, I had to nail holes in it just to be able to squeeze some Mr. Potato Head pieces into it:
When did Halloween become so much work for Mom? Oh well, Ben was thrilled with his new toy, and that made it worth the effort:
Later in the month the kids dressed up and we headed over to the Hendersons' for some trick-or-treating:
Jonah was a spy:
Andy was a storm trooper:
and Ben was a magician. He made candy disappear:
I painted a jack-o-lantern on Maria's belly, much like the one Benay painted on me when I was pregnant with Andy--only smaller:
Here's baby Kevin's first Halloween costume:
Ben especially liked it:
John and I never got around to putting together costumes for ourselves, but Maria had some from last year that fit us perfectly:
This may be the first year I've ever been trick-or-treating with a fully-costumed group of this size. It was a lot of fun:
As we headed out, Ben insisted on staying with baby Kevin:
It was a beautiful evening, and the kids came back with pumpkins filled to the brim. What more could a kid want?