I may think Halloween is a financial nightmare, but everyone else in my house seems to love it. It was much easier when the kids were smaller and didn't care about their costumes. Now it's as if their lives will end if they don't have the costume they desire.
The Halloween whining started as soon as school did. Adam and I both have a creative gene floating around inside of us, and our kids have all been blessed to have acquired these genes. But this means big costume ideas. Unfortuanely for us this year, their costume wants came from obscure video games. Jude and Marky wanted to be a character called Slenderman, and Jet was insistant on dressing like a Creeper from the game Minecraft.
Adam, being like some Halloween Fairy, saying, "All your Halloween dreams will come true", was up for the challenge. Luckily, Party City made these new costumes called Morphsuits, and one looked close enough to Slenderman that Jude was happy, but there was nothing close to a Creeper that we could buy in a store. This 8-bit costume nightmare is a Creeper....
The night before the kids' school parties, I helped Adam finish Jet's costume. I laughed, because at one point Adam stepped back and said, "What am I doing? I need to chill out. This is a 7 year old's costume for school. It's not like some other 7 year old is going to critique my work."
Lesson 165: stressing out and trying to perfect a cardboard box costume because you're scared of what a bunch of 2nd graders are going to think = white trash
I personally think he rocked it.
The kids love it so much it became like a family member. The boys took it everywhere with them, and when Stone first saw it, he hugged it and said, "I wuv you Cweeper!" Here's the Creeper watching Jet play Minecraft with the other brothers.
Lesson 166: a chunk of cardboard being treated like a long lost brother = white trash
The costumes were a hit in 5th grade, I hear, though not many fellow classmates knew who they were supposed to be.
After carving pumpkins, it was time for Trick-or-Treat. Did I mention the kids carved their own pumpkins this year? That is quite an accomplishment. Adam and I have spent countless years carving multiple pumpkins by ourselves, with cramped hands, and kids screaming in our faces, "Are they done yet? Why aren't they done yet?!" The only exception was Jovie's pumpkin. It wasn't actually a pumpkin. It was a big gourd that was bought because it looked like Yoda's head. It was practically uncarvable and caused Adam to break out the jigsaw.
Lesson 167: using a jigsaw to carve pumpkins = white trash
Trick-or-Treating turned out to be an experience, as usual. Because of the hurricane it was pushed back to Saturday, so Brett couldn't sit at our house and give out candy while the twins slept. We had to take a double stroller AND a wagon.
The other thing that turned out to be a problem, was Jet's costume. The poor kid was stuck in a box. He could hardly hear, had no peripheral vision, and couldn't walk up and down stairs. We'd be walking somewhere, then turn to see Jet wandering around aimlessly on the other side of the street. Then there was the problem with his head. Every time he'd look down in a candy dish, his big block head would fall off into the bowl. Adam finally ran back to the house and grabbed some tape. He came back and wrapped a ridiculous amount of tape around his costume. Being in Pittsburgh, we have a lot of hills, and where there are hills, there are a lot of stairs. It got to the point where Marky would go up to a house and say, "I'm getting candy for my brother down there," and he'd motion down to the bottom of the stairs where a kid in a green box stood flailing his arms.
We did make it though. The kids were all troopers, as were our neighbors. I was a tad embarrassed when my family walked up to a house and the man said to his dog, "Uh oh, here comes the rush!"
Lesson 168: your family being "the rush" during Trick-or-Treat = white trash
Halloween may have been a slight hassel, but it doesn't seem so bad now that I can eat my weight in Snickers bars!
Lesson 169: Trick-or-Treating around the block and being able to fill an economy sized diaper box to the brim with candy = white trash
There are some advantages of a large family! :)
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