Halloween 2016

We've been in full Halloween Mode around here for a while now! The house has been decorated, the pumpkins were carved (and painted), and we've been looking forward to the big day with a candy countdown - a wooden Frankenstein wood cutout named Frankie with candy hanging from his arms. (This is a tradition from my childhood and last year my little sister Melissa dug out the Walker Family Frankie, had my dad help her cut out the shape and she hand painted one for each sibling. I love it.) Austin got into his countdown chain and ate all of his candy – so it was just a countdown for Lydia. But, regardless - we have been excited for Halloween all month and it did not disappoint! 

We'd been talking with the kids about Halloween costumes for a long time with not much success. Lydia originally wanted to be a “candy witch.” (We were looking through a magazine and saw a costume of a princess with a giant lollipop wand and I think it stemmed from that. You know, plus the desire to have candy incorporated into her costume.) I tried to talk her into being a family of bees with David as a beekeeper. We went through a bunch of options but none of them were really working for both of us. Finally we were at the store, just kind of talking about it and I mentioned that maybe she could be Zuma from Paw Patrol. I don't typically like character things and was trying to steer her away from a commercialized costume like that, but her eyes lit up SO bright when she realized that she could dress up as that! (Zuma is part of a team of pups/dogs that work together to “save the day”.) So we bought fabric for that and to make her a little costume. She was SO excited. I decided that it would be cute if Austin could be one of the other pups, and they could still have matching costumes. But Austin was set on being a Bumblebee. I'd have just made him be what I want him to be, but he's so cute when you ask him what he's going to be and he says “Bumblebees -Outside!”  (Because we talked about being a family of bees and each time we did he'd point outside to where we have an awful wasp problem and say outside. The costume idea just stuck!)

I had a little bit of a hard time letting go of the fact that they wouldn't have matching costumes, or that we wouldn't have a family costume. I know it's not a big deal - but come on... They were SO cute last year as a matching witch and bat. But I decided to make Austin a little bumblebee costume to go along with Lydia's Zuma costume - and I'm glad I did because they were both so happy and so darling. Plus, Lydia's Zuma costume ended up being WAY more work than I had anticipated and so I'm glad that I didn't decide to make two costumes like that. I thought... it's just a vest and a little hat - it will be easy! But there were so many details that just took a long time. If I was ever tempted to skip a detail - Lydia was on me like a fly on raisin covered pancakes. She specifically wanted the "holes" in the helmet/hat, and when I put an extra border of blue on the chest badge- she was very concerned because it wasn't exactly like Zumas. I'm pretty proud of how the details all turned out. I bought a jacket at walmart and about 75 cents of yellow felt for Austin's bumblebee costume and thought that after Halloween I'd just unpick the yellow stripes and he'd have a nice coat for the winter... but... it took me a lot of effort to get the stripes on and it's so cute! And... I think that Austin might just have a bumblebee coat this winter. Ha.  

 

Lydia was so excited for Halloween. She wore her costume all week (as I was working on it and finishing things up) and then that morning she woke up and before she even came downstairs she had put on her brown shirt and pants, vest, hat, and had her basket. Her first words to me were "Can we go trick or treating now?!?" It was going to be a long day. But thankfully my sister decided to come down and bring her kids and we got to play together all day! On our way to David's Eide Bailly trick-or treating, we stopped by the Peaden Homestead so Cal and Sue could see their costumes and then we spent a good amount of time walking around David's office getting the hang of trick or treating. To say the kids loved it would be an understatement!

After the office trick or treat, we hurried home to eat some dinner then headed out for our neighborhood trick or treating. I love looking at these pictures because they really were so so darling. In all honesty, Austin "got" trick or treating better last year when he was a little bat-on-a-mission knocking on doors and picking out a candy. This year Austin preferred to try to eat his candy as soon as he got it and didn't love walking from house to house. At one point he laid down on the ground (happily, not throwing a tantrum) and just smiled at me. Ha. Lydia on the other hand was running so fast that I couldn't keep up with her. She found a friend and they bolted from house to house, although they didn't exactly get the "you go from one house to the next in order without going backwards or across the street" thing. Between the two, plus Camille, it was actually a more-stressful-than-I-would-have-liked walk. Pretty quick it was clear that Camille and Austin were done and so we came back to the house and let David take Lydia out to the other side of the neighborhood. It turned out perfectly. Jenna and I got the littler kids in bed, Lydia and David has a great time together, and then after she was done and in bed, we ate yummy food while watching a Hallmark movie. Halloween win, right there! I only regret that we didn't get a picture of Jason at any point. 

Happy Halloween 2016!