Halloween (finally!)

    

 There is a real problem with studying photography and being a perfectionist. It makes you think that every photo you take has to be perfect, especially as the holidays come around. After all, I began this whole photography thing as a way to have better photos to scrap. Despite my best intentions, by the time the kids were dressed up in their costumes on Halloween night, I had lost the light. I'm not terribly comfortable with the flash yet (especially as my camera broke and I've been using a loaner one from school that is older than mine and I can't control it as completely as I can mine). So I improvised and made them dress up for me again this weekend so I could get good pics...of course what any good mom would do, right?







 
Bailey was not decided about what she wanted to be for Halloween until we were at the costume store and saw this costume. Then I told her about the artist behind the piece that this costume was inspired by and she really loved it. Of course, it took the cake when I found this wolf's head in a basket. I could never get her to wear the hood, but I think she made a pretty cute Red anyway.


Cole had a really hard time finding what he was going to dress up as this year. He really wanted to be a ninja, but the costumes were all too small. He's at that size where the boy costumes are too small and the teenage costumes are too big. He kept saying, well, maybe I'll be Luigi until he finally tried on the costume and he was hooked. If we had more time, we were going to make him a brick for over his head, but time escaped us this year. Maybe next year!


By contrast, Lindsay has known what she was going to dress up as for a whole year. The nice part for me is that she could use Cole's Harry costume from last year, we just found her some cute Gryffindor knee highs and a cute little skirt and she was in business. We tried really hard to get her hair to be "poofy" (her word to describe it) like Hermione's, but she has hair just like her mama: stick straight and unwilling to style. I thought she was a cute little Hermione anyway.




For the first time, Jason and I both dressed up for the ward Trunk or Treat this year too (of course, being behind the camera, there is not actually any proof of this, but I swear I did!). When Jason and I were shopping for costumes, I had an idea of what I wanted to be, and I was really hoping to get J to dress up as a couple with me, but that didn't work out. Then he was going to be Mario for Cole but they didn't have a costume in his size by the time we went out looking for us. I did think it was pretty clever, though, when he decided to dress up as Jason. I really loved how goofy he was at the trunk or treat too (although he would end up scaring the little kids a little until he took off his mask to show them it was really Brother Mauss--of course, they don't know that he's even scarier than Jason!). It's always fun to see people you only see dressed up in church clothes actually dressed in costumes and there were some pretty funny ones. Although we were so rushed this year that we didn't really have time to enjoy it, I love Halloween. Of course, the weather wasn't really cooperating leading up to it, but finally on Halloween it cooled down a little and gave us a little taste of fall. Having lived in Arizona for 5 years, this has definitely become my favorite time of year!