Steve and Elsa

If you've been reading this blog for more than a year, you know that we don't celebrate Halloween in the traditional manner. We don't have neighbors to speak of, so going door to door for candy is a hassle. A few years ago, together with the Farmboy's sister and her family, we started a new tradition that has made our kids completely over-the-moon-happy.

It starts as you would expect, with costumes.

This year we were once again visited by Elsa, this time wearing a dress found at Costco, which apparently is even better than the amazing one I concocted last year.

Whatever.

Queen Elsa was happy to have her friend Steve along for the festivities.

With torrential rain in the forecast (we felt sorry for all those PNW kids out there either braving the elements or stuck trick-or-treating at the mall), we moved our usual celebration from our house, to the roomier house of their cousins.

Ahem, I mean Pikachu and Ariel.

The traditional in-the-dark Easter egg hunt (YES!) was moved indoors, but was still quite dark and exciting. Headlamps? Check! Flashlights? Check! Buckets? Check!

Shortly after all of the eggs were found, we convened on the front veranda where the kids took turns beating on a castle pinata and chasing down flying candy, with a good dose of raindrops and leaves thrown into their buckets for good measure.

And swords. There were swords too. And sword-fighting Disney princesses, no less.

Followed by a puppet show.

At which point everyone was a little rummy from sugar and swords and beating up castles while dressed in costume, and it quickly got ugly with dying seals and other such nonsense which led the responsible parties to break up the fun until the next time.

Cousins are the best.