A football game broke out in my living room

I suffer from a tragic disease that requires me to ensure that our entire household dresses up for Halloween according to a cutesy matchy matchy theme. Last year I thought my matchy matchy dreams would die at the hands of my strong willed 5 year old. She surprised me by practically demanding to be part of the group. This year was much the same.

We debated a food theme for quite some time after someone mistakenly let her look through a Pottery Barn Kid's catalog and she spotted their to die for $79 cupcake costume. I think $79 is a lot of money to spend on one article of clothing for her let alone an article of clothing she'll most likely wear 3 times max. Sadly, someone mistakenly let me see the Pottery Barn Kid's catalog, too, and I almost fell into the black hole of cuteness pondering for three fleeting seconds whether or not I should buy the cupcake costume. I know. What the hell was I thinking?

Luckily, the cupcake costume sold out and my problem was magically solved. My three year old then announced that he wanted to be a football player and the rest is cutesy matchy matchy history. Here is my future linebacker:

I'd say he's my future quarterback but I think we all know defense wins championships. Chubby cheeks and a fondness for cuddling on the other hand just wins your mother's undying devotion. To prove it, I will now subject the internet to a photo of my future linebacker saying grace before his class party:

Do not pretend your heart didn't just grow three sizes. I'd hate to have to call you a liar. That's cute stuff and that's all there is to it.

The newest first grader wasn't too shabby either:

Being a cheerleader was entirely her idea. She spent the day doing made up cheers that centered around spelling her name and flapping the pom poms around. It was desperately cute. It sort of warms my cold, black heart just thinking back on it now. Kind of like how this photo of our whole football squad warms my heart:

Clearly, I'm the idiot referee. I wore the costume to work and annoyed everyone on my floor by repeatedly blowing my whistle and throwing my flags for imaginary penalties. Several males felt obligated to point out that I probably shouldn't announce that it's first down after I've announced a loss of down and some didn't seem to think I needed to blow my whistle and throw a penalty flag to announce, "Touchdown!" Whatever.

My husband was the coach. He's a costume minimalist by nature so I was pretty impressed when he drew out a play on his clipboard and agreed to wear headphones. I suppose there's something to be said for the enthusiasm level of a participant when your costume theme centers around their favorite sport. And our posse of dogs were supposed to be the crowd watching the game. I had big plans for illustrating this with giant foam fingers made of poster board attached to their collars. Except my children infected me with some potent cooties the week before Halloween and suddenly they're members of our huddle instead. So be it.

Prior to succumbing to the potent cooties, we also successfully took the kids to a pumpkin patch. Here's a photo of my children sitting on hay bales to prove it:

I tried to get a shot of both of them sitting on pumpkins too but I guess that's too much to ask. Certain people seem to be allergic to group shots:

I think he was busy protesting how hard his life is. As an example, he was forced to eat donuts at Krispy Kreme on the way to the pumpkin patch. We literally had to shove them down his unhappy throat:

And then he was subjected to some mandatory cuddling. The horror:

All while his sister was force feeding my husband:

Yep. Life is rough.