This is Halloween

Note the Cheshire Cat Pumpkin (:

Little Miss Tinkerbell

Back...to the Future!

I had originally planned to use Riley's red birthday dress and sew a hood for her to be "Riley Red Ridding Hood." I had also intended not to dress up this year. Long Sigh...Parenthood and Plans are not so friendly with each other.

I had thought sewing a 12month size cape would be a "simple" project. Funny because I still have no idea how to use the sewing machine and decided after major back surgery would be a good time to learn. In the end I couldn't muster the time or energy despite buying a pattern and beyond that I realized at Riley's one year photo session that her party dress was getting awful short. A trip to Target later Riley and I both had a costume. She would be Tinkerbell and I would be Alice.

Not everyone's costume deviated from the plan however, Isaac's costume came out perfect. He requested a "Marty McFly from Back to the Future costume" way back in August. For those of you who remember the Ghostbuster costume we made for him two years ago I promise he comes up with stuff on his own I don't tell him to be characters from 80's movies. I thought it was a great idea and pretty straight forward. He had jeans, a t-shirt, and a button up shirt. I had a smallish jean jacket so all we needed was the orange vest. I scoured the Internet for one and after losing two auctions on Ebay I sunk 30ish bucks into a shiny new one from the Gap. I figure he can wear it after Halloween, pass it on to Riley and I may be able to wear it as well. The orange vest is kind of the lynch pin of Marty McFly's attire. Without he would have been a kid wearing layers.

I had been toying with notion of dressing as Alice from "Alice in Wonderland", but Internet searches had proved discouraging. Adult costumes for woman are so slutty! I wasn't going to trick-or-treat with my kids looking like a stripper. Anything with more class was super expensive for example the one I loved on Etsy was $70. Now to leap from not buying a costume at all to spending $70 was something I wasn't willing to do. I settled for a children's large size Alice from Target. It was inaccurate and not very well made, but I was not going to be mistaken for a hooker. There was one snag, I got home and tried it on and it was pretty darn short. Not a big deal if your walking, but I was going out in the wheelchair...I almost scraped the whole idea but got some stripey tights and sucked it up (trick or treating with a one year was going to be more of a sprint than a marathon anyway).

In years past Mike and I had mucked things up trying to trick or trick in my childhood neighborhood, his childhood neighborhood and the one we currently live in. Holidays are so complicated when you're a parent (throw in a set of divorced parents each on top of that). Of course Halloween is nothing compared to Thanksgiving and Christmas. Reconciling our warm fuzzy childhood memories with each other and splitting time between grandparents now that all of them live here is a major complication. We were fortunate to grow up in prime trick or treating areas. This year I decided I'd dress the kids and myself and (with assistance because I'm not that healed yet) drop by my old neighborhood earlier in the evening figuring it would give family and friends a chance to say hi and if Riley pooped out Mike would be fresh to take Isaac out for round two.

It went well except that as we pulled up in front of my childhood home I spotted a 10yr old wearing the exact same Alice costume, so embarrassing. Yes, I let the one year old have candy, but that wasn't my original intention. She was holding her own cute little candy bucket and while we were making the rounds I discovered she had pulled out a piece of chocolate and bitten through the wrapper! I traded her the drooly chocolate for a lollipop while she was riding in my lap. Shug, it's Halloween. Both kids sailing on a respectable sugar high made it through my old neighborhood, stopped home and went through our neighborhood with Mike. After that leg of begging door to door for candy was over Isaac made his annual trip to a nearby haunted house where he calmed older girls by assuring them he would protect them and hold their hands.