My kids look much less blurry in real life.

These are terrible photos. Horrible. We've got a pretty bad camera, but it's all I have, so that's what you get. Plus, I took these at the end of a the very long day because I was recharging the batteries (of course) when the evening started. The kids were tired, itchy, and wanted to change into their pajamas and gorge themselves on candy, and I had to convince them to stand for just a couple more minutes so I could take a picture of my and their hard work. All the photos are blurry (you don't need glasses) because we hadn't replaced three burned out bulbs in the living room. They are replaced now and it's much brighter in that room.

Child Two dressed as a Chinese girl. She got her face painted at the ward party (a large scar over her eyebrow, so I'm not sure what that made her. A Chinese girl involved in a terrible accident, I guess), and she looked really cute with eyeliner.

Child Three and Oldest Child were abducted by aliens. I made those expletive alien heads from papier-mache, which took hours, and put together the costumes. They look nothing like the lovely picture in the magazine where we got the idea. For one thing, the aliens were tired and kept looking up at the sky by the end of the evening. For another, I didn't want to spring for two pairs of slippers for the feet, so the feet ended up looking like stubs, even with socks. And these costumes were surprisingly expensive to make. Never again. I told the girls to save the parts of the costumes and we'll use them for other Halloween costumes in the future. This is what they were supposed to look like. This is the Alien Encounter costume from Family Fun magazine.

Child Five was Spiderman again. He didn't care. He just wanted some candy. He wasn't all that keen to get his picture taken, either.

Child Four was a kitty. A kitty with a flag painted on her forehead by the end of the evening, but a kitty nonetheless.

Child Six didn't wear a costume. He didn't seem to mind too much, as long as he had a sweet in each fist, and I was way too tired to care about costumes anymore. Husband and I didn't wear costumes, either. Every year I tell myself I'm going to get some really cool costumes for the two of us, and every year I don't.

Child Two was skating on the floor in the dining room this morning before school and got a huge splinter wedged into her foot. I got half the splinter out before we left ("MOM! Hurry up! We're going to be late for school!" Unsympathetic children.) and then couldn't remove the other half, which was wedged deeply under her skin. I left her home to soak her foot while I took the others to school and my mother to work, then came home to help her. She had already managed to get the rest of the splinter out and was ready to go to school, though she limped through the rest of her day.

Child Four came home and said to me in an English accent, "Oh, Mother, this is dreadfully awful. I have too much homework!"