halloween

ok...not too bad, just a little under a week since halloween and i'm getting my post up!  i'm on a roll.  halloween was super fun this year - both kids were really into it.  involved in picking out their costumes, racing from door to door for trick or treats and of course, gobbling up as much candy as possible.  ugh. 

kellen decided this year he would be a train - he wavered between james, busy as a bee james, thomas and finally landed on percy.  with the move just behind us, we had plenty of boxes, so i googled thomas the train costumes and came up with some great tutorials for creating a train out of some boxes, hot glue and paint.  i got right to work on cutting out the pieces and while maya napped, k and i worked on painting and gluing. 

mr percy the train (with face painted by grandma!)

when maya found out kellen would be percy, she quickly decided she would be ata hat...aka sir topham hatt.  the round, friendly head of all the trains on thomas and friends.  ever since our "day out with thomas" adventure in hood river, she has had a mild obsession with ata hat.  everytime halloween was mentioned she would declare "ata hat!".  so ata hat it was.  i ordered a kid's size top hat off amazon and went out to search the second hand stores for a little boys suit.  after no luck, i happened to be talking with a mom of kellen's friend and she mentioned that his favorite thing was to wear a suit that his dad had bought for him.  lucky for us...we were able to borrow the suit jacket and that almost completed our costume.  i had found a little yellow shirt at goodwill that i cut into the shape of a suit vest, a black piece of felt tied into a tie and some grey pants, white shirt and black shoes that are part of our every day wardrobe rounded out our little miss sir topham hatt. 

here's a side by side with the real sir topham hatt and our little miss topham hatt...not too bad!  actually super cute!  she put the costume on at 1 in the afternoon to go visit our old neighbor and didn't take it off until late into the evening! 

miss maya topham hatt

the "real" sir topham hatt

maya topham hatt and torsten the big red dog!

miss topham hatt and percy the train

trick or treat!

maya and daddy in line for trick or treat

kellen unfortunately found it pretty difficult to run from house to house with his percy costume on...so off it came and we hauled that thing all around the neighborhood.  note to self:  no more cardboard box costumes.  they are super cute and impressive, but not realistic and will promptly be discarded in favor of keeping up with the friends for more candy!  on the plus side, we now have a real fun percy costume/toy that has gotten some good playtime post-halloween and it was a fun project for us both!

the crew mid trick or treating!

for the second year in a row, we met up with our "baby and me" friends...tilden and torsten, tom and wes, kellen and maya, sydney, henry...just missing hadley.  we all enjoyed a great halloween feast of pulled pork, sweet potato fries and other yummy treats prior to heading out to trick or treat in the ladd's addition neighborhood.  it's so much fun to see how much more into it the kids are each year. 



post trick or treat...and they ALL chose to eat a sucker!



the loot!



on a sugar high in their new halloween jammies!