costume party at great-grandma and grandpa's house

For many, many years now, my parents have hosted this costume party for all of us, and it is seriously a blast.

Okay, Tim in full Luigi moustache

And Julia in Heidi's old ladybug costume. It's way tamer on Julia than it was on Heidi.

Jay getting help from Maria with his Power Ranger helmet

Oh, be still my heart. This is Lydia as Justin Bieber

The whole group--Maria is a toucan, and James is a Lynx basketball player

Here's us. I'm the tooth fairy, and he's an invisible villian.

Here's my mother--the witch stirs her brew.  Actually, it was sloppy joes, and they were divine.

Here's Alicia as a ninja, and pregnant ninja at that.  You don't find a lot of those. Dan was also a ninja, though the family pictures were taken with their camera, so I don't have them. b.g. is a train conductor.  That's quite appropriate, given his love of  Thomas the Train.

Here's p.j. in her tulip fairy costume--notice the shoes.  Every litlte girl could use green velvet shoes with turned up toes.

Kirsten told us she was Black Swan. I have no idea what that is, but she looked good.

Oh yeah, attacking the old video games--See Dannell's pants? She was Smarty Pants for a reason.

Here's me and my Sweetie. He ate a lot of chocolate and then wanted me to lick the rest off his fingers, and he insistently put them in my face.  Okay, fine.  Later I heard he threw up last week.  I'm livin' so dangerously, sucking chocolate off the fingers of a Sweetie who barfed.  (unh.)

Here they're playing in the kitchen, attempting to share.

The video games in the storage room--note the intensity of concentration.

Oh, but here we begin the Mummy Wrap Game.   There were many winners and no losers.

And the whole basement was effectively tee-peed, but we cleaned it all up.

Yes, Pin the Tail on the Cat.  We made this thing back in  2002, and my mom faithfully saves it in the bathroom closet so we can tape it on the door every year.   Everybody won, in case you're wondering. We wound them up, blindfolded, six times and pointed them toward the door, where they staggered and felt the cat over carefully.

YAY! You did it!

Phones now are way more fascinating than they ever were.  Mines's still fairly dull, actually.  I'm proud I can even text and email photos.

Yes, and crafts.  We had those too.

And ended with birthdays and cake and  it was a great night.

Mom? Dad? Thank you for doing this every year. The excitement around this house the last couple days was pretty intense. The kids were ready to put on costumes at 2:30.

The thing that had me laughing my heart out tonight was my brother's child, my own godson, asking if there was any limit on the number of little weenies allowed to any one person.

We made four pans and it's this: Little weenies, wrapped in bits of crescent dough and baked for about 15 minutes.

They are delicious, a feast.

Jay and I have even brought them as an appetizer to grown up dinner parties and people descend upon them, but nobody has ever asked the legal limit on them except my brother's child.

Eat up, Buddy.

What a great night. love, Val