Nobody can find the other glove.
There are costume pieces on the floor and makeup spread across the bathroom counter. Someone needs help with a cape. Someone else has taken off the part of the costume you just helped them put on. You're looking for a missing shoe while trying not to smear someone's face paint, and the kids are already asking if it's time to go.
Then somehow, everyone makes it to the door.
We've walked out of ours as superheroes, prisoners, vampires and characters from some of our favorite stories. There were Halloweens when we planned every costume together and others when the girls knew exactly who they wanted to be and the rest of us found our place in the story.
I didn't know then how much I would love having those pictures now.
There we all are, together for one little moment in time, before the candy buckets were filled and the costumes started coming apart.
So if one person in your house has already decided what they're going to be for Halloween, start there. You might be surprised how many people can fit inside their story.
Step Into the Same Story
Sometimes all you need is one character. Someone wants to be Dorothy, Alice or Woody, and suddenly you're figuring out who else belongs in their world.
The Wizard of Oz
It started with Dorothy.
She was only a year old, but once she had the ruby slippers and Toto tucked in her arms, the rest of us just had to find our place along the yellow brick road.
Dad became the Tin Man, I got to be the Scarecrow, and her three-month-old baby sister made the tiniest Cowardly Lion.
Then everyone comes together, and somehow you're not standing in your own house anymore.
You're off to see the Wizard.
Alice in Wonderland
Start with Alice and let Wonderland get stranger as the family grows. Add the Mad Hatter, Queen of Hearts, White Rabbit, Cheshire Cat or even a few playing cards.
Toy Story
Woody and Buzz are only the beginning. Add Jessie, Bo Peep, Rex, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head or a few little green aliens so everyone can claim a favorite.
And if there's a baby, I would have a very difficult time resisting the alien.
Peter Pan
Start with Peter and Wendy, then add Tinker Bell, Captain Hook, Lost Boys, pirates or even the crocodile. Nothing has to be too perfect. Lost Boys should probably look a little lost.
Winnie the Pooh
Pooh, Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore already belong together, with Christopher Robin, Rabbit, Owl or Kanga and Roo for a bigger family.
And there are few things sweeter than a very tiny Piglet.
Everybody Gets a Superpower
Sometimes the family doesn't need one story. Everybody just needs a cape.
Our Superhero Family
Superheroes made it through more than one Halloween around here. We had Batman and Batgirl, and we had Superwoman and Supergirl.
There is something wonderfully ridiculous about standing in your ordinary house with your ordinary family while everybody is suddenly wearing capes.
The best part is that the superheroes don't even have to belong to the same universe. Let everyone choose. Batman can walk out the door with Supergirl on Halloween, and nobody is going to stop him.
The Incredibles
Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, Violet, Dash and Jack-Jack have already done the matching for you. Everybody gets the same unmistakable superhero look while still claiming a character of their own.
Heroes & Villains
Let half the family save the world and the other half cause the problem. Mix favorite heroes and villains however you like. Halloween is probably the one night nobody will question Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman and Harley Quinn leaving the same house.
Make Up Your Own Superheroes
Give everyone a cape, a color and a homemade symbol, then invent the superheroes yourselves. Masks, wrist cuffs and extremely serious superhero poses can handle the rest.
Nobody can tell you the costume is wrong. You made the superhero.
Pick a Costume That Gets Funnier With Every Person
Some family costumes begin with a favorite story. Others begin when someone says something ridiculous and everybody else says yes.
Cops & Prisoners
In our family, the kids got the badges.
The parents got 18 to life.
Striped prisoner costumes did most of the work for us, and the girls only needed police gear before they were ready to haul Mom and Dad away. Once we stood together, there wasn't much explaining required.
We had clearly raised the people who were going to arrest us.
S'mores
Someone has to be the marshmallow. Add graham crackers and chocolate, then another cracker, campfire or little flame when you need more costumes.
The more seriously everyone commits to being a snack, the better the picture gets.
Breakfast
Bacon can marry an egg, and their children can be toast and pancakes. Add a cup of coffee when somebody else wants in.
Nobody said a family costume had to make sense.
Taco Night
Start with a taco and add hot sauce, an avocado, tortilla chips, a lime or another taco until the whole family has somehow become dinner.
Cardboard may actually make this one better.
Milk & Cookies
One glass of milk surrounded by cookies works just as well as one cookie surrounded by an unreasonable amount of milk. A soft round cookie also makes a particularly sweet costume for the littlest person in the family.
Make the Whole Family Spooky
Sometimes everyone doesn't need a different character. You just need to look like you all belong to the same wonderfully spooky family.
Our Vampire Family
Eventually, we had the Halloween when everybody got fangs.
Black clothes, pale faces, capes and whatever dramatic vampire details everyone wanted were enough to pull us together. Nobody needed to match exactly. We just needed to look like we had all been living in the same very dark house for several hundred years.
Skeleton Family
Black clothes and bones are enough to pull the whole family together. Use skeleton pajamas, simple costumes or add white bones to black clothing if you feel like making them.
Nobody needs to match perfectly. Skeletons have been dead a very long time. They are unlikely to care.
Classic Halloween
Let everybody choose their favorite Halloween thing: a witch, ghost, pumpkin, black cat or bat. Individually they're different costumes, but stand everyone together and they belong.
The theme is simply Halloween.
Monster Family
One monster can have horns, another can have three eyes, somebody gets fur and somebody gets enormous teeth. Make every monster completely different.
There are no accuracy problems because nobody can prove what your monster was supposed to look like.
The Addams Family
Wednesday, Morticia, Gomez, Pugsley and Uncle Fester already come with their own wonderfully strange personalities. The hardest part may be deciding who gets to be whom.
Then try not to look too happy in the picture.
Let the Kids Choose the Story
Eventually, Halloween started looking a little different around here.
Evie & Mal from Descendants
The girls chose Evie and Mal, and we didn't stop at costumes.
One needed blue hair and the other needed purple, so we dyed it.
By then they knew which details mattered. They knew what belonged with their characters and what they wanted to see when they looked in the mirror. I wasn't deciding who they were going to be anymore. I was helping with the transformation.
Inside Out
Joy gets yellow, Sadness gets blue, Anger is red, Disgust gets green and Fear gets purple. Everyone can claim a completely different character while the colors pull the whole group together.
The dangerous part is letting the family decide which emotion belongs to whom.
Super Mario
Mario and Luigi can bring Peach, Toad, Yoshi and Bowser along, giving everyone a favorite without breaking the theme.
The only real problem is deciding who gets Yoshi.
Scooby-Doo
Scooby and Shaggy can head out with Fred, Daphne and Velma, and a bigger family can always make room for the monster they're supposed to be chasing.
Minecraft
Steve and Alex can walk beside Creepers, skeletons, zombies or whichever Minecraft character has currently taken over the house.
Square heads encouraged.
They Don't Have to Match
And then there are the Halloweens when nobody is particularly interested in joining the same story.
Those count, too.
One year, one of my girls was Hermione. Her sister walked through the dollar store, picked whatever caught her eye and put together a costume entirely her own.
Another Halloween gave us an even less likely pair.
Slappy from Goosebumps walked out the door beside a unicorn.
Try finding the family-costume theme that contains those two.
There isn't one.
But they belonged together in our Halloween picture, and by then that was enough.
Somewhere Along the Way
When the girls were babies, I got to pick what we were all going to be for Halloween.
I loved it.
One little costume idea could take over the whole family, and suddenly I wasn't just finding something for the girls to wear. I was figuring out who the rest of us could be, too.
Then the girls got bigger. They started choosing favorite characters of their own, and eventually they had very definite ideas about who they were going to be.
Somewhere in those pictures, the costumes stopped being mine to choose.
I didn't stop loving Halloween when that happened. I just got a different job.
Instead of deciding who they would be, I got to help find the blue hair dye, fasten the cape, hunt for the missing glove and stand back while they figured it out for themselves.
The Best Family Costume Might Already Be in Your House
Before buying complete costumes for everybody, look around first. Check the dress-up bin, open the coat closet and dig through the old Halloween box. Somewhere in there may be a striped shirt, black dress, overalls, cape, cowboy hat or inexplicable wig nobody remembers buying.
Then start with the person who cares the most.
If your child has been talking about Dorothy for six months, you don't need to search for a family costume. You need to figure out who else lives in Oz. If someone already owns a superhero cape, maybe the family needs superpowers. If the baby has a bee costume, congratulations. You're beekeepers.
And if everybody wants to be something completely different, let them.
The theme doesn't have to arrive all at once. Sometimes it doesn't have to arrive at all.
Halloween can handle that, too.
Make the Picture Anyway
Before everyone runs toward the candy, make them stand still for one picture.
It won't go the way you imagined. Someone will be holding a bucket directly in front of the costume you spent hours making. The cape will be crooked, somebody won't wear the hat, and someone else will already have chocolate around their mouth even though you're fairly certain trick-or-treating hasn't started.
Take the picture anyway.
I look at ours now and I don't notice the pieces that didn't sit right. I notice how little the girls were.
I notice the Halloween when we all had capes and the one when everybody had fangs. I can see the characters they loved before they moved on to the next ones, and the years when the costumes I chose slowly became costumes they chose for themselves.
For one night, we were superheroes, prisoners, vampires, storybook characters and occasionally two things that had absolutely no business belonging together.
But there we all are.
Together for Halloween.
And then we walked out the door.
