Halloween Shenanigans

We had a fantastic time on Halloween celebrating Dylan's first birthday party.  He is an almost Halloween baby so he had a "Monster Mash" party for his very first birthday, and Yomary outdid herself with the decorations.

As for the kids' costumes...well, I knew exactly what Will would want to be for Halloween before I even asked him, since he is still obsessed with dinosaurs (Tyrannosaurus Rex in particular).  After scanning the internet for dino costumes a few months ago, I quickly realized that we were going to run into a problem.

Will and I sat at the computer and looked over the costumes I had found, but he was not satisfied with any of them.

"Those are all nice dinosaurs.  I want to be a BAD dinosaur!"

Most of the costumes were Apatosaurus costumes and a few cutesy T-rexes (think Barney), whereas Will wanted intimidating (think Jurassic Park).

So I figured I could make something--I do have a sewing machine!  I found this pattern (free!) on the Dinosaur Train website, and I found these Flickr photos from some genius mom who came up with a way to make a T-Rex head out of cardboard and glue (and then I blatantly copied it).  The whole thing took awhile, but Will was so excited and really liked it, so the time was definitely worth it.

I didn't put much thought into Anna's costume, but we found a dinosaur hat on sale at the T-Rex restaurant in Orlando, so I decided to make her a stegosaurus.  I used the same pattern, but printed it out at 70% size and made some triangle spikes instead of diamonds.  Will sometimes calls her a little stegosaurus (after a character in his Detective Dinosaur book), so the pink stegosaurus costume seemed appropriate.

John and I have not dressed up in years, but the party invitation said everyone had to dress up and we didn't want to be party-poopers.  So I made a Walmart run on Saturday; the only female costumes they had left were pretty skimpy.  I decided we would be dinosaur hunters (since no doubt we'd spend the entire evening chasing 2 little dinos), so I just scooped up some hunting gear.

Some pictures of the kids (and Daddy-Dino-Hunter) trick-or-treating:

Will really enjoyed the candy hunt this year and was very excited about all of his treats.

Anna just ran up and down the road and explored everyone's front yard.  Some kind person actually came out to the road to put some candy in her basket, though, so she did get to eat a little chocolate.

Jasmine (Ali and Marcela's youngest) tried to share her candy Nerds with Anna.  They are only a few weeks apart in age:

Anna says, "How 'bout next year you make a costume in a lighter material?"  Poor sweaty girl!

Sliding around the kitchen (and "borrowing" Alexiya's baby doll):

So much fun!