Pre-Halloween Halloween Party

A while back the kids were invited by Amanda over to her house for a Halloween party today. Ken and Karen were gracious enough to host the party and invite our family and Barry and his clan over for fun and games. So after church we all suited up and headed over.

All the kids showed up in costume. I'll go ahead and get my complaint out the way early. My camera was taking terrible pictures. I think partly because it was so bright out. (the camera's white balance algorithm just wasn't compensating correctly for the huge discrepancy between light and dark areas in the framed shots). So because of that a lot of shots are a tad blurry it seems. Maybe I should bite the bullet and get a new camera (I hear Nikon has released the D300 now). Or maybe I should swap lens for a bit to make sure that isn't where the problem is. It feels like I've noticed the camera being "off" on shots (for lack of a better word) for the past couple of months.


Quinn went as a member of a NASCAR pit crew. I have no idea what it says about his self esteem that he wants to be the guy fixing the car rather than the guy driving it. And what's up with a pit crew guy wearing a baseball catchers mask.


Catherine and Faith went as princesses. Because that's their thing.


Here's Amanda and Catherine. You can tell Catherine is a princess because she's sitting very lady like. Not that I'm saying Amanda isn't sitting lady like (wait, that's exactly what I'm saying).


Amanda was a dalmatian and Reuben was a lion, but since we got there about 15 minutes late Amanda and Reuben were already out of their costumes. Luckily Amanda got back into costume for the games later on.


Jacob was Spider-Man (or Speeder-Man as Barry kept calling him).


Ginger went as a Mexican Princess. Looks for the upcoming Disney movie in theaters soon. At least I think that's what that costume is, if not, I don't know what she was suppose to be.


Barry was Albert Einstein.


Later Karen took a turn at the Einstein wig since she didn't dress up in a costume (is wig swapping between married couples considered acceptable?). Actually maybe she was in costume. Maybe Ken and both Karen's dressed up as middle aged parents. In which case their costumes were quite good and very authentic.


And I was in my low budget ninja costume. Complete with sword and paper towel roll nunchaku. Which I might add, if the temperature going to be in the high 70s / low 80s, wearing a costume that consists of sweats and is all black probably isn't the smartest thing you could do. Here I am performing gravity defying ninja acrobatics.


And here I am about to open up a can of whoop ass on an unsuspecting tree. The tree was unable to dodge my cat like reflexes. This may be the famous fly crane kick. I'm not sure of the name though since I had to kill the master that taught me the technique before he could finish my training.




We ended up spending practically the whole day there. In addition to decorating pumpkins, KarenH had also wrapped up bubbles in streamers. And once the kids got the bubbles out, I started attaching the streamer to their backs and turning them loose. They seemed to like it.


KarenH also led the kids in a spiderweb making project. It's almost like Karen has experience in entertaining a large group of kids or something.


There was also a Piñata. Not the whack it until it breaks kind, but the yank on a string and it opens kind.


The video above is the opening of the Piñata. The video is pretty short, just over 30 seconds I believe. And has anyone else been having any problems with Google video? Seems like 25% of the time after I upload the video it claims it is live, but when you follow the link it's unaccessible for a fair amount of time afterwards (sometimes up to an hour, like happened when I uploaded this really short clip).