Halloween 2012: Avengers Assembled

Happy Halloween! [... a couple days ago.] We were dreadfully amiss in our celebrations this year - no pumpkins (painted or carved!), no decorated sugar cookies, etc. It was just kind of a crazy month with soccer and swimming and scouts and school and it never came together. 

BUT we did dress for the occasion!

 The boys loved (as you can tell from their cheery dispositions) sporting their Halloween shirts (yay for hand-me-downs from cousin George!): Will's had glow-in-the-dark spiders, Clyde's said "Ghouls love me, mummies don't" and Jack's was... a jack-o-lantern. Poor kid, haha!

We also coordinated with the holiday as much as possible for church the Sunday before.

 This was quite the milestone in their little 'Huck Finn' lives - both boys wore black pants and black socks and real black church shoes to church instead of crocs or sneakers. We might try it again sometime...

 Me and baby Jack in all of our orange and black glory.

 Our ward trunk-or-treat was on Tuesday night and we went allllllllllll out:

 We (obviously) were the Avengers and I was pretty dang happy with how all of our costumes turned out. 

For those who don't have superhero-obsessed children in their midst and may not have seen the movie, here's a side by side rundown of each of our characters:

 Tony Stark (aka Iron Man without his suit) // Chuck.

 Just in case the goatee and light chest thing didn't give it away, we put this on the back of his shirt:

 I love how this picture caught Jack's mesmerized face as he checks out the light, haha!

 Next up:

 Captain America // Clyde

Bless Target and their $10 costumes for the little boys! The shield was all Chuck though - Grandma Pam donated an old pizza pan and Chuck painted it. It's officially Clyde's most prized possession.

 

 Thor // Will

Again, thanks to Target for the costume and Chuck for the prop - he found that 'hammer of Thor' a few months ago at D.I. and wisely picked it up. And I think Will's recent 'no-haircut' policy lends some legitimacy to his costume as well...

 The Incredible Hulk // Jack

I picked up this little t-shirt at Old Navy a few months ago for a dollar-fifty and put it away for Christmas but I was happy to pull it out early for our little crazy baby!

 I had a long-sleeved green shirt and green pants for him to wear under it, but it ended up being so nice out that we switched to camo shorts instead :). Jack provided the crazed facial expressions and body contortions himself to get into character...

 Aaaand finally:

 Black Widow // Jana

This costume came together pretty easily: I picked up the jacket and pants at Savers and painted some old shoes black and then stole Chuck's shotgun belt. Holly stopped by that afternoon so I put her in charge of spraying my hair red; she did an awesome job! She was also our designated photographer before we left, thanks Holl!

 

 We had a good time at the trunk-or-treat; it was crowded but fun! Here's Jack with Rapunzel (Jaylynn), Clyde with another Captain America (Tanner), Chuck with a suited-up Iron Man (Noah), the cute announcement-making Porters (congrats again!!) and me with a vampire/princess/cheerleader (Meridian).

 And our costumes paid off, because we won (in a pretty legit four-way tie) for Best Group costumes, wooo! This means we've won awards three years in a row, so no pressure there...

 And that was our Halloween!