Trick or Treat!

I feel so much better about my little slip up in the middle school drop off line a few weeks ago.  Because this morning?  I had to lay on the horn in the elementary school drop off to keep the car in front of me from rolling right smack back into me.  Missed me by a hair. I didn't even get upset though. Instead I felt validated.  Funny how that works, isn't it?  I was mostly just thankful I didn't have to get out of the car in my sweatpants because I've got a huge zit on my chin and my hair was a complete rat's nest. 

There is something so messed up about having to deal with the threat of zits and wrinkles at the same dang time.  It's just not right, I tell you.  Not right at all.  I think I know the culprit though.  I've been putting Vaseline with cocoa butter on my lips just before going to bed at night and suddenly I'm breaking out around the right side of my mouth.  Makes sense since that is usually the side that goes on the pillow first at night.  It's like I can't win for losing.  Woe is me.  

But enough about me and my first world problems.  It's Halloween!

Many of my older Halloween pics are pre-digital and I am not the least bit organized when it comes to photos.  Or anything else, for that matter.  I had this plan last week to compose a post of all the boys' past Halloween costumes but since they are 13 and 9 now and their Halloweens past go all the way back to 1999...well, let's just say that ain't gonna be happenin' today.  Maybe next year.  

I did, however, find a few older ones that I snapped photos of with my iPhone (yes, a picture of a picture but dragging the scanner out and all that mess requires a great deal of time and level of patience that I seem to be currently lacking)... 

When Devin was three (2002) he wanted nothing more in this world than to be Batman for Halloween.  The smallest Batman costume I could find was a little big for him but he could not have cared less.  He was Batman!  There is one particular photo of him in it that hung on the refrigerator for years. In it he had the most serious look on his face as he held his cape open on both sides as if to say, "I.AM.BATMAN!"  I so wish I could have found that one but I did find this one and well, it just makes me smile...

Always be yourself, unless you can be Batman
Always be Batman. ~Andy Biersack

The following one, from 2003 (Dracen's first) pretty much sums up his infancy...

Halloween wraps fear in innocence,
As though it were a slightly sour sweet.
Let terror, then, be turned into a treat...
~Nicholas Gordon

And this one from 2007, sums up his toddler/preschool years...

You are worried about seeing him spend his early years in doing nothing.  What!  Is it nothing to be happy?  Nothing to skip, play, and run around all day long?  Never in his life will he be so busy again.
 ~Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The following couple of years he became a little more serious about his costume business...

Clothes make a statement.  Costumes tell a story.  ~Mason Cooley

Devin, on the other hand, has most often preferred to be incognito, behind the mask...

There is nothing that gives more assurance than a mask.  ~Colette

Now go let your freak flag fly...

It's Halloween!