I’ve always loved carving pumpkins, stringing spider webs, and checking out the cute ghouls who visit our doorstep on Halloween.  In our younger days we attended the occasional Halloween party, most infamously as a pair of dice.  I still remember walking into the party and my principal saying, “Oh, look at that… they are in para-dise.”  Very funny.

In the pre-kid days, our poor dogs endured a lot:

2004

Enter children, and the dogs were spared from such torture.  Sam was about 5 months old:  our little pumpkin!

 

2005

“ROAR!” was the first animal sound Sam made, so we dressed him up as a 1-year-old lion.  It seemed appropriate:

 

Lia was a dragon that year.  These two friends have been together every Halloween since!

 

2006

Sam was 2 and at the height of his train obsession, so a Thomas the Tank Engine costume was a good choice that year.

It was Maggie’s first Halloween; she was 6 months old and we borrowed Lia’s adorable dragon costume.

2007

We braved the crowds with our little airplane pilot and brown bear.  (Dressing as cattle may have been more appropriate as we were herded through Trick or Treat town – we never made that mistake again!)

2008

Time to get crafty!  We had a blast painting these costumes together, and in the end we created two adorable jack-in-the-boxes.  I’ll never forget the kids bopping up and down, pretending to “pop out” and surprise everyone!

We went trick or treating for real that year, so we mastered the fine art of layering snow gear underneath a costume.  The kids were plenty warm, but they had a hard time waddling up and down icy porches in their boxes!

2009

Time for a family theme:  we have a football player, cheerleader, referee, and crazy fan.  Go Big Red!

The football crew looked a little chunkier with all the snow gear:

2010

I bought a sewing machine, and my friend Shelly taught me how to read a pattern.  The kids wanted to be Tom and Jerry, so I did my best!

It was another family theme:  I was a mouse trap and Clark was the animal control officer.

2011

Time to break out the sewing machine again.  Maggie wanted to be Rapunzel, and Sam wanted to be Pascal, her chameleon friend.  Thank goodness Grandma Daehnke was in town before Halloween to help with Pascal’s costume!  Rapunzel’s dress was store bought, but we did make her braid with yarn and silk flowers.

The bulkier Rapunzel and Pascal get ready to trick or treat!

The moms dressed up in 2011 too… we got very witchy and created a scavenger hunt for our little monsters:

2012

This year, the kids declared that they are old enough for “scary costumes.”  They are 8 and 6, after all, so we ended up with a witch and some sort of Grim Reaper.

I’d say they succeeded with the scary costumes, because it terrifies me to see how fast they are growing up!

Happy Belated Halloween!