Halloween 2011

We had a fun week leading up to Halloween!  We have lots of pictures, but these represent the highlights! 

On Tuesday and Wednesday (October 25th and 26th), Owen's Parent's Day Out had a hayride!  Well, sort of.  It was more like a trailer hooked up to the back of an SUV.  And instead of hay, there was a large blanket.  In any case...it was great fun!  I was able to make arrangements to go on Tuesday so for that, I am thankful!  I arrived at PDO during gym time so I was able to play with Owen for 15-20 minutes before the non-hay hayride began!

Here is Owen in the gym. 

...and here he is in the back of the trailer.  The lady driving drove around the church's large parking lot twice. 

On Friday of the same week, Austin, Owen, and I headed to Odessa for the big OHS vs. PHS game.  It was a chilly evening so here is my sweet little man all snuggled up on his mommy's lap. 

On Saturday, we gave Owen's Halloween costume a test run.  Here he is in a wagon at a pumpkin patch in Midland.  He was not interested in the pumpkins AT ALL, so all the pictures of him with a pumpkin anywhere nearby are pretty "blah"...

...and here is the final version of his costume! 

For several weeks (maybe even months), we were just going to let Owen be a monkey again.  We knew he would fit in his year-old costume and to be honest, we weren't ready or willing to fork over money for another costume when he had a perfectly good, VERY gently-used one in the closet.  For some reason, though, I started feeling guilty about the "recycled costume" idea since this is his only his second Halloween.  I guess it boiled down to wanting a variety of pictures to look back on while I remembered his first two Halloweens.  Will he remember either Halloween?  No, probably not.  Would he have cared at all if I had dressed him in the brown, fuzzy cuteness from last year?  No, probably not.  Would I have gotten over the fact that Halloween #1 pictures and Halloween #2 pictures were nearly identical?  Yeah, probably so.  I know, I know.  Silly me.  It's not like we go crazy on Halloween...it's just fun to dress up, visit a few people, and have a good time.  Some candy is a bonus, but we are more interested in visiting than we are all the sweets. 

Anyway, my mom had the idea to make him a quick-and-easy spider costume.  Brilliant!  In just two evenings, I had this little black outfit ready to go!  The turtleneck and sweatpants were $3.88 each at Wal Mart.  The 3 pairs of black socks for his "legs" were $3.00 (total) at Dollar Tree.  The fishing line was my dad's...FREE!!...and so were the 24 plastic grocery sacs I used to stuff the legs!  The final touch was sort of an afterthought...glow-in-the-dark fabric paint for the spiderweb and spider.  That was $2.97 (also at Wal Mart).  So, for less than $14, wha-la!!  

I cut the side seams out of the shirt, turned it inside out, sewed the legs on one at a time, and then connected each leg to the previous one with clear fishing line and a needle.  I started the "thread" at the wrist of the shirt, went down through the first leg, tied a knot, down through the second leg, tied a knot, and so on.  Every time he moved his arms, all the legs moved with them.  It was really cute. 

It only took 40 minutes for the leg-stuffing and sewing and then several nights later, I spent another 10 minutes or so on the spiderweb and spider.  I was VERY pleased with the results and Owen looked adorable.  As soon as I showed him the costume, I said "What is it?"  He knew right away and said "a spider."  Hooray!         

On Halloween night, we went to a photography studio that was doing a fundraiser for Meals On Wheels.  For 3 cans of food or a $5 donation, the photographer would take a picture of your child that would then be downloadable from his website.  Of course Owen was perfectly well-behaved while in the 20-minute line.  As soon as we set him on the hay, he squirmed and cried, and you would have thought his world was ending.  Whether he was tired or hungry or hot or growing impatient or any combination of the four, we don't know.  After 3 attempts, we gave up.  Here are two of the three pictures we got.  (It seems I downloaded the same one twice.)  

After the less-than-ideal photo shoot, we ran by Uncle Kyle's apartment and Grammie Lu's house for a quick visit.  Then, we went back home to eat jack-o-lantern shaped pizza from Papa Murphy's.  A little before 8:00, we went to our church's trunk-or-treat.  For some reason, we thought it ended at 9:00, but it ended at 8:00 so we caught the tail end of everything.  :(  Next year we'll know!  

We wanted to visit a few friends too, but only made it to one house since we were dangerously close to Owen's bedtime.  James and Amy were excited to see our little spider and gave him some peanut m&ms as well as a Thomas the Train Uno game.  (Pictures of that in a future post!)  

Overall, Halloween 2011 was lots of fun!    

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween! 
Carianne