Anticipating Halloween

Yesterday's mail brought a "Costume Express" catalog full of Halloween costumes, and it wasn't minutes before Julia had her hands all over it.  Together, she and Madeleine have pored over the "Halloween book," as Madeleine calls it, picking out their desired costumes for this October's holiday.  Actually, Madeleine didn't really have a say in the matter, as Julia chose a costume for her ("Mommy, I want to be THIS witch, and... Madeleine can be this LITTLER witch.")  It doesn't really matter, however, since there's a 99.9% possibility that Madeleine would have chosen to be a witch so long as Julia wants to be a witch.  At any rate, this catalog has incited all kinds of Halloween frenzy in our house.  It's going to be a long 2.5 month wait...

MADELEINE: (running into the dining room) Mommy I'm SO EXCITED for Halloween!
ME: I bet you are.
MADELEINE: For the CANDY!
ME: I know, it's so exciting to go trick-or-treating.
MADELEINE: So...Mommy, can we go trick-or-treating?
ME: We can on Halloween.  It's not Halloween today.
MADELEINE: No it IS Halloween.  I want to go trick-or-treating.
ME: Well, I haven't even gotten your costumes yet, silly!
MADELEINE: (laughing) Oh!  Yeah!  Uh...so, Mommy we can go to the store to buy our costumes.  I'll go get my shoes on!
ME: No, honey, we can't get costumes today.  Besides, we can't go trick-or-treating because it's not night time!
MADELEINE: Oh!  Yeah! (running off to play)

Two minutes later...

MADELEINE: (running back over to me) Mommy, the SUN IS SETTING!  It's turning to Halloween, so c'mon, let's go trick-or-treating!

Note that this all took place at around 9am.  Sunset, my Poopy Uncle Pants.

Julia has channeled her excited Halloween energy into her artwork, producing a picture of two witches (one Madeleine and one Julia, of course) in anticipation of the big trick-or-treating event:

I'm pretty fond of this drawing, although it's hard to choose my favorite element.  I like the lumpy bats up in the sky.  I'm also partial to the floating blonde head to the left of Madeleine, which was probably a first draft of Julia's head, but which gives the picture a spooky, Headless Horseman-like aura.  But I think my most favorite element of the picture is the angry pumpkins off on the side.  They remind me of Ernie and Bert... that is, if Bert had fangs and a hurdle-shaped nose. 

And check this out.  If you flip the paper over to the back side, you'll find yet another floating head...

Now that's some SERIOUS Halloween spookiness!