Raising Three Boys and Their Sister: Happy Halloween.

My beautiful kids!

    I know our family can be a little crazy and at holidays we go overboard a bit but I must say, I will never look back and think, I didn't have enough fun with my kids. I have been planning this Halloween for a year. Because we have three boys who are the same age I have wanted to do three musketeers for a long time. I wanted to wait until they could walk and talk or truly understand Halloween. This year seemed perfect. I was working with my mom starting last year with buying patterns and thinking about other accessories we would need. We also had to figure out the grown up roles we would play.

   We got our ideas ready then we had to sell it to the kids. I knew I at least had one more year where I could direct their thoughts into the theme that I wanted to do. So months before this October I purchased the Mickey Mouse Three Musketeer Movie. We played it for the kids and it was a success. They loved it. I probably don't have to explain why but for those of you that don't know my three boys that well it is because they are obsessed with sword fighting. We watched that movie so many times I can quote most parts of it.

   A few months ago I started adding Halloween into the conversation. I told them that they could ask Grandma for a costume and it would be great fun. I told them that she could make them a three musketeer if they wanted. James asked if he was a musketeer if he could have a sword. I said yes and the three of them were sold. It was a done deal the family would be characters from the Three musketeers. We even got my parents and cousin Ryan to join in.

So here is the run down of our Characters The Boys are the three Musketeers. My dad is the fourth. If you aren't familiar with the story there are three musketeers, Athos, Porthos, Aramis and later D'artagnan joins the group, making four. So those are the blue guys. Then starting from the left Ryan was one of the Cardinals guards, Lilly was a court lady (the boys called her princess Lilly but there was no princess in the story). I was the Countess D'winter and Ray was Rochefort (or the bad guy). My mom was also a court Lady but most people though she was Merrida from Brave. Either way she had a great dress. My mom made all the costumes and I think we looked fantiastic.

We had a few friends over for Halloween. So the kids got to run around and play in addition to being dressed up. Like usual our street was packed with kids. We gave out over 800 pieces of candy and still had to turn people away. The kids got to play in our front yard after trick or treating while we finished passing out candy. It was a great night. One of my friends who came over even said that we were changing her. Her and her husband came over dressed in costumes. She said she hadn't worn them in ten years. SUCCESS!!!! I love dressing up and I love Halloween. I hope all the things we do as a family will be lasting memories for my children. I'm sure some day they will be embarrassed by us but until then I am just going to enjoy every minute of it. So here are a few of our pictures from that night.