Happy Halloween 2008!

The story behind the costumes:
First, Ava. She decided she wanted to be a pirate. I was thrilled as I figured most of this costume could come from the thrift store. But we were having dinner at our friends' house, and she and James were upstairs playing somewhat quietly with their boys, when she came downstairs in (almost) full pirate gear! They generously offered to let us borrow the costume, complete with sword and hook, as the boys had their costumes and they didn't include a pirate. Ava was beyond thrilled. We added an eye patch and some facial hair, and she was set. She practiced her pirate sounds a good few days before hand. You know, avast, ahoy, swab the decks mateys, things like that.
As far as James is concerned, that wasn't as easy. Several months ago when he was eating some kind of snack item I remarked that if James had a superpower it would be to save people from hunger as he always seems to have a snack handy. Hence, SnackBoy was born. I wrote it down thinking I would forget (who, me?) and as we are a year behind on costumes for him (he wore the bunny last year, and wasn't really into doing that again) we needed to go with something new. I got some felt for a big "S", some red satin and some blue bias tape for a cape at the fabric store. The cape was super easy, and the "S" on the shirt was ironed on one of his undershirts with interfacing. I made a mask out of the rest of the blue felt and some leftover elastic. We got a couple of small bags of pretzels and Sun Chips and fastened them to his cape. And he rode off into the sunset to save hungry folks from being snackless.
The kids had a great time. We shortened their canvassing from last year and they still made out like bandits. The turnout this year wasn't as much as last year. Same as last year, I didn't recognize very many kids as being from this neighborhood, but there were several houses on our end of the block that were dark, so we didn't get a terrible amount of traffic. We ended the night with a few Butterfinger bars left in the bowl, and that's okay with me. (Compared with last year where we had to turn the lights out early because we ran out of candy.) After the kids were done they came home and helped me pass out candy. I think they had just as much fun doing that as going trick or treating! They came down from their sugar buzz at a decent hour, and we wrapped up another Halloween. Thank goodness we have a costume for James for next year. I can only imagine what Ava will want to be next year. I can only hope that I have the skills to complete it in her vision!