Houston picked out everyone’s costumes for Halloween this year. He wanted to be a scary skeleton and requested that the twins be Super Mario Brothers, with Gabriel as Mario and Zeke as Luigi. (He plays the “Mario Cart” game on Daddy’s Nintendo DS, as well as sometimes watches a cheesy show about the video-game brothers from the late ’80s.)

Intrigued as always, Gabriel (left) & Zeke help Granny, Mommy & big bro carve the jack-o-lantern.

Granny & Grumps couldn’t stay for all the fun, but they helped us get the boys into their costumes. After hot chocolate, we hit the streets with some of our closest neighbors.

Very soon after the festivities began, Luigi (Zeke) only wanted to eat the few pieces of candy he’d gotten and wasn’t at all interested in continuing with the trick-or-treating nonsense. So Daddy and a stubborn Zeke headed home to hand out treats and eat sweets.

“If I could only ride a trike, surely I could score more candy in a shorter time,” contemplates Mario (Gabriel).

Houston the skeleton, who was sticking with the some of the faster, older kids (led by Miss Heather from next door) eventually got ahead of Mario (Gabriel) and Pocahontas (the boys’ good pal, Maddie), who I was pulling in our new wagon. As we made our way up an incline and farther away from home, we inevitably caught up to an increasingly slower, tired Houston.

That’s about the happiest skeleton I’ve ever seen & that was just the first house!

By that time, Gabe was pretty pooped, so I took him home, where we helped Daddy and Zeke with candy duty, and Miss Ruth and Mr. Kevin (Maddie’s folks) took Houston and Maddie around the hood for more trick-or-treating via wagon.

Even though the Houston, Gabriel and Zeke were on totally different schedules that night, it turned out to be a great Halloween, thanks to awesome neighbors, friends and family, as well as perfect autumn weather.

“Hey, pisan … waddya lookin’ at?!?” says Luigi (Zeke), conjuring his inner Italian machismo.

Click the top photo to check out Part 1 pics, which include trunk-or-treating a few days before Halloween at Uncle Greg and Auntie Merdy’s church, and the above shot to view Part 2.