Hallow-weenie

Long ago, Charley decided that she wanted to be a bumble bee for Halloween . . . and hence Zander decided that he wanted to be a bee too (since he wants to do everything she does). However, the only bee costume I could find involved a spaghetti strapped dress with a tutu, and I just couldn't bring myself to put him in a tutu dress, so I tried to talk him into a dinosaur costume instead. However, the first time I pulled the costume out of the bag, he screamed like a girl when he saw the dinosaur head . . . he said it was too scary. So another trip to the costume store produced the only "non-scary" costume I could find . . . Thomas the Train. For the past two months we've been talking up the train outfit, even though Zander continued to insist that he wanted to be bumble bee. FINALLY, a few days ago, he seemed to buy the whole train thing, so I was cautiously optimistic about him wearing the costume.

When it came time to put on the costume yesterday, he put up a little bit of a fight until I told him that he had to put on the costume if he wanted to go trick-or-treating, and of course he gave in. So here you will find one of the few pictures I got of him in his costume and Charley in her costume.

Here's a group shot of our kids and all our friends' kids getting ready to pound the pavement in search of candy. If you look closely, Zander is making a pretty silly face.

And here's the first house we came to . . . so we've been in costume a whole ten minutes now . . .

However, two minutes later Zander was in complete meltdown mode and refused to take another step unless the costume came off. He kept crying, "I don't like it, I don't like it, I don't like it!!!! So the rest of the evening, he looked like this . . . Zander = no costume.

After hitting up a few streets, the smaller kids started to fall apart, so we headed back to our friends' house to check out the candy stashes. After a few suckers and candy bars, Zander literally passed out, and Brian looks like he's heading the same direction . . . .

Despite some moments of tears and meltdowns, the kids had an awesome time and we enjoyed watching them have a good time. The first thing Zander said when he got up this morning was, "I want to go trick-or-treating." Only 364 more days to go buddy . . . .