Facebook envy

Once again, I have Facebook envy. Everyone (including myself) posted pictures of their kids, dressed up for Halloween. Why am I the only one whose child will not stand still and smile at the same time? I got about 3,000 dead-serious pictures, 4,500 action-blurred pictures, 150 costume-malfunction pictures, 67 nose-picking pictures and 2 pictures that were OK enough to post. Gaaaaah! I swear Katie looked cuter than the pics show.

This is the one that ended up on Facebook:

Something about this apple doesn't taste right...

And here are a couple of samples of what I'm dealing with:

Really? You waited until this photo shoot to start trying on the gardening gloves that Grammy gave you? And would it kill you to smile?

That's a dish scrubber. I guess this qualifies as "Whistle While You Work"

This picture-taking gig is so frustrating. I have just enough expertise with my camera to make picture-taking really difficult. Sometimes I think I should just go back to shooting in "green rectangle" (i.e., uber-amateur) mode because I tend to get in my own way when playing around with aperture and shutter speed. I mean, how are you supposed to think about all those things while you chase your toddler around the kitchen? I've been trying to set a custom white balance too, which is darned near impossible because I'm never shooting in the same spot.

Anyway - photo-taking aside, we had a wonderful Halloween. Dada came home early from work, we all ate dinner early, and we bundled our little princess into her wagon for trick-or-treating. We only stopped at a few houses, but she had so much fun looking at all the kids in their costumes. She insisted on getting out and jumping on the gigantic inflatable slide that someone had rented. I love our neighborhood - a lot of families go all-out on Halloween. There were some really elaborate decorations! One house had their teenage son dress up like a scarecrow. He stood perfectly still in the garden, and every once in a while would shout "BOO!" and scare the bejeesus out of someone. Katie thought it was funny.

Another house thought Katie's costume was so precious, they wanted to take a picture. I said, "Sure, good luck! I've been trying to get a picture of her all day." Sure enough, as soon as they took out the camera, Katie was suddenly mesmerized by their enormous inflatable Frankenstein's Monster, and looking at the camera was out of the question. Sigh. I just remembered that nearly the same thing happened to us last year with her ladybug costume. Only one of the pictures was good enough to post, and she wasn't even looking at the camera! And that was before she could walk! Omg.

Anyway, we ended up with a little bit of leftover candy (score!) and lots of fun memories. That's what it's all about, right? Even if you don't have the pictures to back it up? LOL

Happy Halloween, everyone!