Halloweenies

Halloweenies...rhymes with Sweeney, which was my maiden name. 

 Colleenie Sweeney halloweenie.  

And someone's had too much sugar to type straight.  I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

John-Paul was a joke.  With an afro.  Because he's the whitest white boy and that's funny.

I had originally bought us all funny joke shirts to wear so we would have a family costume as a Comedy Club.  Clever and easy and not crafty at all.  Right up my alley.  But somewhere in the Halloween planning, certain kids decided to be other things, and the whole family idea went out the window.  

Like this girl who wanted to be a princess.  Same dress-up idea, different costume as every other Halloween past.

Andrew did wear his joke shirt (brownie points!) and then wanted to wear a lady's wig for kicks and giggles.

There's that Princess again.  Nurse Princess perhaps?  Always one to ham it up for the camera...

...like her mother.

After many tears (he wanted a lady's wig too!) and frustrating costume changes, Eamon decided to be Mario, even though the costume was entirely too big.

Alexander was the cutest monkey at the zoo!

Group shot before we went to (and missed completely) the Halloween Parade.  Whoops!

So we did some early trick or treating before the family party.

At every house, Maggie would say "Trick or Treat!", followed by "Thank you and God Bless You!"  When I asked her why she was saying that she responded "Because Sister (her Kindergarten teacher) told me to!"  Oh, duh.  God Bless Religious teachers :)

"I gots candies and chocolates!!"

Get that monkey off your back.  Hehehe.

This little town has such cute houses:

We went to my brother's house and met up with family, like my niece, Bridget, as Miss Piggy:

And saw my brother's new puppy, Zoey:

And took a photo of 11 of the 20 (soon to be 21) cousins on the Sweeney side of the family.

 Did I ever tell you how much Xander loves dogs?  Has to pet them and know their name ("What's his name called?")  It's quite an appreciated change from when some of our other kids were little and terrified (ahem, Andrew) of canines.

Speaking of Andrew, we celebrated his birthday (9) along with cousin Megan's 14th birthday:

The loot we came home with was impressive for how few houses we actually went to.  BUt I guess that's what happens when you multiply the goodies by five kids.

We always take all the kids' candy and dump it into a family bowl.  Totally different from when I was a kid and we guarded our candy like it was gold and hid it where our siblings couldn't see it.  My hiding place was my Secret Drawer where all my treasures went.  It wasn't a secret at all, just the 4th drawer down in my bureau.

Excuse me, but I see a Twix calling my name.