Halloween 2009

Halloween has become a three part event for us. Part One is the costume party at the kids' school, which was on October 28th. Moms have to dress up too. Here is a brief history of my costumes:
Circa 2006-- I'm an American Indian, and bonus, there's Izumi as a pumpkin. I felt great about being an Indian, since I really am one, a little bit, on my mom's side of the family. Wouldn't the story be more convincing if I could remember more details? Anyway...
Circa 2007--I'm a hippie, and I give ALL the credit to my lovely friend Renee who not only gave me the idea, but also gave me her jeans and permission to cut them up and sew in that panel to make them sufficiently bell-bottomed. Not sure the Japanese moms knew what I was; for that matter, I'm not sure that this is a great "hippie" representation, but I was feelin' groovy...
Circa 2008--so here I am, a Japanese "obaachan," which means "grandmother" put nicely but can also venture into "pushy old hag" type territory. Don't know how pushy I actually look, but this was definitely my magnum opus of costumes; I even won first prize in the contest...

Fast forward to this year:
Koji was a Transformer, Bumblebeeto be exact.

Izumi was Snow White, I was too cheap to buy a costume for Misaki so I put her in a traditional Japanese baby kimono thing that Aogu's mom gave us. And as for me, what am I? That's right! I'm a tree! OK, so you probably can't tell. And even if I had taken a full length picture, you still might not be able to tell because I was entirely too lazy to pin leaves to my shirt or otherwise make my intentions clear. However, I was green on top and brown on the bottom. Close enough? Promise I'll try harder next year, but whatever I do will definitely involve false eyelashes because these were SO FUN...thanks Carl & Penny!!

Part Two, Trick or Treating on October 31st:
No surprise, it was stinking cold so the kids wore the "winter" version of their costumes. They probably should have just worn their coats, but I was too stubborn and determined to get my $12.99 worth out of their costumes, so I just tried to have them wear layers and run between the houses.

By the way, it was much too breezy for Misaki's previous "traditional Japanese baby" look, so I pulled out her snowsuit and decided that she was a "skier". Convinced?

I think this was our third year of going trick or treating with Matt and Nadia, and I guess we'll go with them next year too, if I can forgive Matt...one of the first houses we went to had a dog, so of course, Izumi was petrified and wouldn't let go of Aogu's neck for the duration. I felt like I had to trick or treat for her after that, so I was a prime target for Matt's mocking: "Sure, Jamie, that candy is for Izumi, uh huh, I saw you take the one that YOU like...". If I have a whole year and receive a lot of prayer between now and then, I can probably forgive him. ;-)

Our neighbor Tom has a reputation for handing out "full size" candy, but this year he went above and beyond and came out dressed as a vampire!

Since Halloween fell on Saturday this year, we cut our trick or treating a little short so we could go to Part Three: the church Halloween carnival.
Misaki the skier...
Personality difference illustration: at the carnival, Koji raced from game to game and burned right through our tickets. On the other hand, Izumi spent much of her time hunkering over this fishing game.

Overall, Halloween 2009 was a great success. I can safely say so, now that I've eaten all of the chocolate the kids got and I'm in position to turn over a new leaf on not eating sweets. Starting tomorrow....