As any self-respecting parent blogger with children still at home will tell you - there is a unspoken law somewhere that I'm sure clearly states that all parent bloggers MUST post their darling children in each year's Halloween costumes. I'm not about to break the law, so here's my post! Check it off my "to-do" list.
As I'm certain that the only people interested in all of the pictures to come are either relatives, close friends, or possibly long-time "One Dad's Life" readers who are in no way creepy stalkers, despite disturbing statistics to the contrary, I'm going to get right to it and skip the rest of my normally clever prose!
Since Halloween was on a Saturday this year, I actually got to be around for the preparations instead of fighting traffic on the highway! So, I sat on our front porch, enjoying the wonderful fall weather with the three pumpkins we purchased at Eckert's last week, cut the tops off, and scooped out all the seeds and other assorted pumpkin innards. Then I turned over the pumpkins to the kids to carve their scary faces in...or if that was too hard to make more traditional pumpkins.
I joke. They never intended to carve their own faces into the pumpkins!
First we have little Rachel, who at eight years old figures she can do pretty much anything by herself and how she wants! I figured what kind of trouble could an eight year old get into with a sharp knife and a giant squash that weighs nearly as much as her? So, naturally, I gave her the knife (or more accurately - wasn't about to try and disarm her) and let her go. She sketched out her idea for a jack-o-lantern face on a piece of paper, then enthusiastically stabbed the fleshy gourd. Remind me to hide the knives when I'm done typing this, won't you?
While Rachel was going crazy with sharp objects in the kitchen, Rebecca had successfully enslaved my wife, Dianne, and had forced the captured Dianne to work on her hair. As a performing kind of family, dressing up in costumes is NOT a task to be taken lightly. Hair and makeup had to be done!
BTW, sharp-eyed readers will note that the normally blond and short-haired Rachel now had long BROWN hair. That's right, Dianne died her hair AND wove long braids into the newly browned hair. This all happened before Rebecca had captured Dianne and Rachel had gone on her knife-wielding, pumpkin carving spree.
Then the newly coiffed Rebecca had her turn carving up a pumpkin. Check out that concentration!
I even got a chance to carve a pumpkin all by myself, due to the whole Saturday thing! Yeah me! No one took pictures.
No doubt by now you are DYING to know what their costumes were, right? Well, wonder no more, dear reader! Here they are, posing in my sisters living room:
Rebecca, on left, is "Alice in Wonderland" and Rachel is "Laura Ingalls." Authentic, no? Dianne made the "Alice in Wonderland" costume, and my mom made the Laura Ingalls prairie dress for Rachel. The bonnet was a souvenir Rachel bought on a trip my parents took both kids on last year - a trip to all the important "Little House on the Prairie" and "Laura Ingalls" sites. Cool, huh? There's no way we're going to get suckered into expensive and sub-par store-bought costumes, no matter how long it takes or whatever the cost! No, not us.
Here's both of the little darlings together along with a matching doll for Rachel:
Each year, we head to my sisters neighborhood, which just goes crazy for Halloween, to do our trick-or-treating. It also gives us a chance to show off our Halloween themed food (forgot to take pictures! Here's a link to some of last year's food) and gives the kids a chance to trick-or-treat with their cousins. This year, however, Rebecca ran off to her friend's house for a party with her classmates and didn't actually trick-or-treat with us. Wah!
We even brought our freshly carved jack-o-lanterns to my sisters and added them to the collection on the porch. Here's what they all looked like:
From left to right are Rebecca's, Rachel's, and finally mine. I stole my pumpkin's eyes from a book. My daughter's are ALL original!
While Rachel was out trick or treating with one of her friends from school and her cousins, she ALSO ran into ANOTHER friend from school! Here they are in all their over-the-top glory.
It was totally Rachel's idea to bring a basket to put her candy in instead of using a plastic pumpkin. Apparently, the plastic pumpkin just wasn't the right way to collect candy for a Laura Ingalls costume! Details make all the difference, people, details.
And now, as a special treat for all my dedicated readers, I shall present MY Halloween costume. However, since I'm the one that normally takes the pictures on our family outings, there really wasn't any way to get a shot of me...plus I didn't actually HAVE a costume. So, instead, we go now to my alternate reality in the peaceful little town of "Rosebud." In all the important ways, "Rosebud", in Nintendo's "Animal Crossing: City Folk", is exactly the same as my so-called "real" life...right down to being surrounded by talking animals! (insert your own joke here).
So there I am in my pumpkin head and patched shirt, standing next to the fountain I donated to the town 'cause I'm rich. And, yeah, I'm rich like that in real life, too. The parallels are just astounding!
My daughter's put up the "Hey, Dad!" flag while I was in China as a surprise for me. Wasn't that sweet?
And that's it! Halloween 2009. I hope you enjoyed this little journey in self-indulgence, because basically that's what having a blog is all about, so just deal with it people. Creepy stalkers included.
Love the costumes! Bravo/a!
Posted by: KBO | November 03, 2009 at 07:35 AM
I think there is a law that says that--
your kids looked great.
Posted by: kaye | November 03, 2009 at 10:23 AM