Last year my energy level at Halloween was subzero. With the expense of the upcoming move (oh yeah, we moved! I'll fill you in on that later) I couldn't justify buying anything for costumes, so we scrounged up all the costume parts we could from various sources and it went just fine. Fast forward to this year. The kids always start talking about what they want to be for Halloween on, like, November 1. This is the tediousness of being a mom I suppose. This year was no exception and I am pretty sure they changed their minds at least 10 times each. Except Sophie. She has been adamant about wanting to be a princess for months.
Several weeks ago we had some friends to dinner and they said that they had a Dorothy costume that would fit Sophie. That got the wheels in my head turning and before we knew it, we had a family theme going on.
I mean, you can't have Dorothy without her posse, right?
So I got started on putting the costumes together. The boys were surprisingly compliant about being the other characters. We drew them out of a hat so there would be no arguing, but Kade and Trevor ended up trading anyway. This worked to my advantage because I had no desire to make a lion costume and luckily Kade fit into the toddler costumes at Target. From there I used enough duct tape, foil and spray paint to cover America to turn Trevor into the Tin Man. Blake became the Scarecrow after several hours of making a hood out of fleece and a black hat out of felt.
(There may or may not have been some cursing involved with that project.)
I bought The Wizard of Oz movie and Sophie spent the last few weeks singing "We're off to see the Wizard" and reciting "lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" everywhere. we. went.
All in all they were a huge success and they were all thrilled with their costumes, which made me happy. Chad was a good sport about carrying his Oz head around on a paint stick, he even wore a green shirt to match.
I do hope I never have a reason to paint my face green again, especially with a sinus infection. Blowing my nose became very problematic as the evening at our branch trunk or treat went on!
Last night they were so cute trick or treating in our neighborhood. We met quite a few neighbors that are new and have little kids, it was a great family friendly atmosphere.
Several of our neighbors are older and retired so their kids are grown and gone. They just couldn't get enough of our foursome.
Sophie really got into the game this year and by the end of the night she was saying "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! TRICK OR TREAT!". She would also stop and look up to the sky and yell,
"Oh no, it's the witch! Hurry boys!"
She has a flair for the dramatic, that one.
Next year I think I will put white sheets on all of them and call them ghosts...I'm tired!
Yeah, right. Like it could be that easy.
Happy Halloween 2013!
