It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Oh wait! We haven't even had Halloween yet! I guess it's all those aisles of Christmas stuff ALREADY up that made me think I might have missed Halloween this year. Seriously - it's earlier every year. Do stores think that by putting out the stuff earlier people will spend more money? They must or they wouldn't bother.

Anyway - we don't start the whole Christmas thing around here until the day after Thanksgiving, so we have a while. But we do start on Halloween in early September. It took a lot of racking of the brains around here to come up with 6 relate costumes that everyone was happy with (read the boys DID NOT want to be fairies of any kind), but we finally managed. I'm not sure want to unveil the final product yet (well, and it's not done yet anyway), but here's what I was working on last night:

Give her a lightsaber and she could be a Jedi! Not what I was going for, but that's the first thing I thought of when I saw the picture on the computer screen. (Note to self: we could all be Jedi's next year.....)

But the Halloween fun is already in full swing around here. We attended our first costume parade last saturday (as in the 17th). Since the patterns for this year had even been opened yet we raided the costumes of Halloweens (and May Days) past to find stuff that would fit for the occasion. I think I like the whole related costumes idea even more now the hodgepodge we wore, but they all look adorable. Abby as Dorothy (2008), Isaac as Peter Pan (2007), Danielle as a Tahitian dancer (May Day 2009) and Juliann as Tinkerbell (Danielles from 2007):

And the Polynesion Cultural Center is in it's second year of running the Haunted Lagoon. They basically spookify the canoe ride through the villages and start running the haunted rides with the villages shut down for the night around 6pm. We didn't make it last year, but we decided to go this year since it was free with our annual passes and we heard that it was super scary. I mean literally. We've been hearing the soundtrack of scary music and the screaming people all month long. There's something about the evening breeze that just send the sounds over this direction (we live less than a 10 minute walk from the back of the PCC). So, here are the kids waiting for the "Keiki ride" ( for you non-Hawaiin folk, the kiddie ride - our tour guide was a Lost Warrior with a special crystal that warded off the super scary monsters) in their cute Halloween T-shirts:

And then they all wanted to make scary faces (for your viewing pleasure):

And she's just so cute you get 2 of her "scary" faces.


So now we have one elementary school parade, one old ward halloween party, one new ward trunk or treat, and of course trick or treating in the neighborhood to go!