It was Halloween!

For the first time since fourth grade (when I was one of a pair of dice), this year I made an effort to have a Halloween costume. Like so many other young moms, I ordered my family into coordinating costumes that I had procured largely without their input. And, like so many other young families, we were adorable.

Meet Noah and crew!  Notice the pair of giraffes (baby Nate and stuffed friend), the pair of elephants (baby Reed and stuffed friend), and the dove (Sarah, whose costume well may be repurposed in future years as other kinds of poultry).  Also notice the ark in our trunk--a wooden bowl we floated in a small tub.  What you cannot see here is the candy floating in the ark, for withdrawal by ward members at our ward trunk or treat.  (Which, for the record, we entirely missed.)

Consider too the rain drops on the pavement, caused maybe not so much by God's doing as by the water in the tub (carrying the ark) sloshing around our arkscape as we drove madly from our home to our ward building so as not to miss the trunk or treat.

So much going on here.  Some detail shots.

This was Jed earlier in the morning, on his way to work.  (To distinguish him from Moses, we pinned a small dove on his shoulder.  Turns out, the finer distinctions in fashion between the Mosaic and the Noic eras have not been preserved in common culture.)

Note: Maybe my favorite part of Jed's costume was the small spray bottle of water he brought to spritz people with at random.  He didn't really ever do that (it would have been a bold societal move), but oh Noah, it made me laugh.

 Sarah's "dove" feet, looking so much like Big Bird's talons.

We planted Skittles at the base of the rainbow.

And, maybe my fravrit part of Halloween--Reed's cuteness meeting Reed's excitement.

For a while--and I mean a while--Reed knelt in the very center of the gym, turning circles on his knees and yelling, "Go, go, go!"  I caught him on film at the end of his tour.  Even still, you can tell that, as Jed just said, reviewing these videos, "That is one happy elephant."

Fourth grade had nothing on this.  Best Halloween of my life.