Halloween 2013 (and Through the Years!)

Halloween 2013 was a lot of fun. Aaron and I have a longstanding tradition of dressing up in coordinating costumes. We have been doing this ever since we started dating. It's just too fun.

2007 - King Henry VIII and Ann Boleyn. Prize winning costumes. Definitely our finest work. We had so much fun trifting, cutting, and gluing to put these costumes together earlier in the day. I knew Aaron was a keeper when he would put on a dress, hose, and white pimp shoes to humor me... haha! We had a blast.

2008 - Smokey the Bear and a Forest Fire (I didn't end up dressing up or going to the party because I was really sick, hence the PJs. Meghan even had to help me sew Aaron's costume....my smile belies how awful I was feeling.)

2009 - Booritos. We spent all day in the anatomy lab studying, but did make time for free burritos for dinner by dressing up as burritos ;-)

2010 - COPD: The Pink Puffer and the Blue Bloater. Since they don't sell candy cigarettes in stores anymore, we made our own with pretzel sticks and white chocolate. I love the blush on Aaron... haha! I have blue eye shadow all over my face... ghastly.

We'd learned about this in med school, so our classmates had a good laugh when we showed up as the two presentations of COPD.

I even made a jar of "phlegm" (gack). We're so gross.

2010 - Snoopy and Charlie Brown. We also came up with a less disgusting set of costumes for a party that evening. I guess this was Julia's first Halloween costume as well! Well, actually, the blue bloater was. Oh snap.

2011 - Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter. Not our finest work, but this was during core rotations, so I'm surprised we came up with anything at all. I made that paper mache hat the day of! In the morning before work, I covered our bathroom waste paper basket with a plastic bag to act as a mold, then used diluted glue and paper strips to surround it to make the body of the hat. In the evening after it had dried, I added on a cardboard brim, and quickly painted the whole thing with black acrylic paint. Crazy times.

2012 - Aragorn, Galadriel, and Frodo.

So, it will come as no surprise that we wanted to come up with coordinating costumes again this Halloween. When asked, Julia kept saying she wanted to be a monster for Halloween, but being the mean parents that we are, we made other plans... haha! We started our Halloween festivities a few days early with a costume party at the house of some friends. Here's what we came up with:

Little Red Riding Hood, her grandmother, and the Big, Bad Wolf

To make Julia's Little Red Riding Hood costume, I found an awesome red and white ruffled dress for a few bucks at a thrift store. I then bought some red polar fleece and ribbon and made a cape. She carried a little basket filled with play food to take to her grandmother. We completed the ensemble with some tights, shoes, and a white long sleeved undershirt to keep her warmer.

Aaron's costume was really easy to put together. We found a great template online and cut the pieces out of felt and added them onto a black hoodie. (It's his Dead Theologian's Society hoodie, so it had a little left chest monstrance embroidery... haha!).

For my costume, I found a grandma nightgown at the thrift store, and threw on some sweatpants, slippers, and a bathrobe. I also powdered my hair (and eyebrows), and drew wrinkles on my face and neck with an eyebrow pencil. My highest compliment came from a guy at the party who literally told me in late in the party that he'd been wondering all night who the old lady was! I had at least one person fooled ;-) Aaron and I were essentially wearing sweats, so this made this set of costumes among the comfiest we'd ever come up with, so that was also a win.

Meghan, Erik, and Mary-Claire came dressed in an awesome ensemble costume as well:

Mustard, Ketchup, and the cutest little hotdog you ever did see. Meghan sewed and painted these herself.

Meghan and I just love this sort of thing. Our parents were pretty creative when we were young, helping us put together homemade costumes, so, to us, that's half the fun of Halloween.

The hotdog gang with the Riding Hood gang ;-)

I actually had the day off on Halloween, since I was on ER that month and I was done with my shifts. Julia and I had a fun day together. She wore her special monster hat from Gee Mary for most of the day, fulfilling her dream of being a Halloween monster ;-) We were going to try to go to a pumpkin patch that afternoon, but someone fell asleep soon after we left the neighborhood (and it wasn't me... don't worry...haha!), so we returned home so my little monster could have a good nap to ensure she'd have energy for the evening.

That evening, we went to get burritos for dinner. As I said, it's been our family's longstanding Halloween tradition to get free burritos. Back in the day, you had to dress up as a burrito to get a burrito:

Halloween 2009 with our friend, Alex, after a long day in the anatomy lab. It was her first time trying Chipotle! What a good sport to foil wrap herself to humor her crazy friends :-)

But these days, you just have to come in costume. It was a beautiful night and we ate on the patio outside the restaurant.

This monster hat from Gee Mary is pretty awesome. One of the purple furry paws has a little plastic bulb inside with tubing that go to the hands above. When you squeeze the paw, the hands flip up!

This was the first year that Julia really trick or treated, and it was SO fun! Last year, we took her to my parents house (where she helped give out candy until she got scared), and later to Meghan and Erik's house. This year, we spent most of the evening in our own neighborhood. Julia was SO excited to trick or treat! She was giddily running from house to house, eager as could be to get more and more and MORE CANDY!! Haha!

Last year, some of the teenagers in scary costumes creeped Julia out when they came to the door, but this year, she was not scared of anything! That was pretty remarkable since some of the houses in our neighborhood were totally decked out with scary decorations, including creepy statues that moved and talked, smoke machines, scary soundtracks, etc. One house even had fake bloody feet hanging from a tree! Julia was unphased. She was totally a woman on a mission... a candy mission... and she did not let anything distract her from her goal of getting MORE CANDY. It reminded me of the Seinfeld bit (turned children's book) about kids' lives revolving around candy.

There was a little girl a few years older than Julia who grabbed her hand partway through the evening and they went house to house together for a while, which was cute. That little girl's dad was following along with her by cruising along the street slowly in his truck. What!? He wasn't the only parent doing this, either. We are indeed a lazy society when you can't even walk house to house with your own kid... you have to drive. Anyway, despite a few crazy driving parents, it was actually really fun to see the neighborhood alive and interacting. Normally, people in our neighborhood keep to themselves, but that evening our neighborhood was packed with kids, and the adults in most of the houses (or out on their porches) were so friendly, and Aaron and I had a lot of fun, too. It was a beautiful night, and it was a blast seeing Julia so excited.

We surprised my mom by coming to treat or treat at her house. Well, we didn't really surprise her, since she was all ready with a special treat for her favorite little trick or treater - a Sully monster!

Julia and Gee Terri

Little Red Riding Hood enjoying some candy at her real grandmother's house!

It was our best Halloween yet!