Here’s Connor welcoming our beloved and favorite and first Halloween decoration, Ghosty, back and out of the box where he lives 11 months of the year (Ghosty, that is, NOT Connor!):
Noah giving his greetings hug to Ghosty. Cute, right? What you don’t see is in these photos was the boys later discovering Ghosty was an excellent karate punching and kicking bag! I had to wipe Ghosty down to remove the footprints from his stomach and backside.
Connor also contributed to our Halloween decorating efforts by making a diagram of where all of our decorations go, so we could remember for next year. He also added warning signs of “Boo” and “Beware.”
Noah drew…..uh…..a bunch of triangles.
***And, VOILA, we present to you the Ritchie 2010 Halloween house!***
It may appear that we are the only house on our street, but what you don’t see are our twenty-plus BORING neighbor houses.
We did add to our Halloween decorations this year (as we do every year) by adding a phantom ghost to our back yard. I thought a spooky figure in our back forest would be kinda cool and I really wanted a Frankenstein or something like that, but all that Lowes had left in mid-October was this phantom ghost. So, Phantom Ghosty came home with me and was set up. How awesome and creepy does he look in those trees ???
The kids refused to have their photo taken with Phantom Ghosty, unless they were “protected” by me, so here we are…..look at Noah & Shelby’s faces! Those were two very nervous little skeletons.
And now we need to take a solemn moment: Ghosty, whom you saw in the above photos (but who did NOT make it into the final photos – darn), died a sudden death on October 23, 2010. Whether it was the appearance of Phantom Ghosty in the backyard (who was NOT brought home to replace you, Ghosty – no one could do that!!) or the severe karate beatings he sustained from the boys, we will never know. Mark threw him unceremoniously in our trash can before an autopsy could be performed. Ghosty was our first Halloween decoration and the one that the kids LOVED to see come out every year. RIP beloved Ghosty. We will never forget you.
I just had to throw this photo in because it’s so stinkin’ cute – after a full afternoon and evening of Halloween decorating, the boys did a sleepover in Noah’s room and I caught ‘em like this:
I also usually decorate inside of our house, even moreso than the outside, but this year kept it just to the front foyer. It’s very tame (although half of these are talking devices and make a HECK of a lot of noise), but here ya go:
Another Halloween tradition of ours is to drive around and look at decorated Halloween houses. We’ve driven through nearly EVERY neighborhood in Syracuse and its suburbs, I KID YOU NOT, and ours is still probably the best, although this year the number of spectacular houses has noticeably dwindled. WHAT UP FUDDY DUDDY PEOPLE?!?!? Now, our Halloween tour takes us to only about 6-7 reliably decorated houses every year. And yes, the boys get to ride unleashed (as it were) in the back of the SUV with their stuffed animal friends. We’ve trained them to duck quickly and hide if a car comes up behind us and discovers our illegal child (and stuffed animal?) endangerment.
And no, the big huge car emergency kit separating them from touching each other does NOT last for more than 4 minutes or so. It never fails that someone’s head hits the roof or a leg gets caught in a blanket or some other equally horrible thing happens and one of them must finish the Halloween tour back in their seat with their seatbelt on, screaming about how unfair their life has become.
Moving on, I finally convinced Noah that he had the perfect forehead for tattoos. Hey, when I'm right, I'm right, am I right?
Call us nerds if you will (though keep in mind we teach our kids that being nerds means you’re cool and unique and smart and if you’re called a nerd it means people are actually jealous of you), we do a family theme every year. This year it was Connor’s turn to pick, and we ended up being an archaeology team. Mark, Connor and I were dressing like Indiana Jones, and Noah and Shelby were our amazing and stupendous fossil finds in their skeleton costumes. Shelby was tagged as "Humanus Pinkus" and Noah was tagged as "Skeletorus."
Editors note: I just re-read our Halloween 2009 entry and saw that Connor had wanted us to dress up in Greek costumes for this year - thank goodness he opted for archaeologists instead. You don't want to see us in togas in late October in New York. You really don't.
Shelby’s “costume” is actually pajamas (hey, SOMEtimes I can be thrifty), and she wore them for three straight days. When I finally peeled them off of her (indeed, they were nearly fossilized to her body) and tossed ‘em in the washing machine, she CRIED and wailed for her beloved pink “skellie” pajamas.
The larger fossil is now unmasked, and none too happy at his being discovered, even if it was by the notorious Indiana Jones:
And what can I say? Sometimes good fossils go bad and turn on their own kind….
Next year is Noah’s turn to pick our family theme, and he’s already decided we’ll all be ninjas! Whoopee! Can you imagine the fun we’ll have with that theme???!?! Of course, Noah will be only 6 next Halloween, and that means there’s a high probability we could actually be dressed next year as Mario and Luigi, or Scooby Doo, or whatever other video game characters dominate Noah’s goofy mind. But I’m gonna work on the ninja angle. I know I’ve only got a couple more years before they start rebelling against the nerdy family theme, so while I’m still bigger and bossier than them, I’ll work it!
Oh, and Connor informed me that our Halloween decorations are too childish. He says he’s ready for the scary stuff. OH YOU JUST WAIT LITTLE BOY. You just wait. I’ll give ya a scary Halloween smackdown. Tune in here next year - same time, same blogspot - for some of THAT action.
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