Halloween
Although Rowan has dressed up in the past for Halloween, this was the first year that he was actually aware of the whole process. A couple of months ago (yes, months!) he started asking out of the blue to dress up as a king for Halloween. Thankful that he had chosen such a wholesome persona (depending on the king, I suppose, but that's an aside) I quickly agreed that he could be a king. I also thought it could be fun to make the costume with him. I imagined myself deftly crafting a robe out of fabric and having the perfect supplies on hand for him to decorate it to his heart's content.
If you didn't laugh out loud reading that last sentence, you might do so after knowing that I basically have no skill whatsoever at making crafts. :-)
It took us two tries at each thing: we made two robes because the first one I cut out, it seemed that the glue we were using to affix the decorations actually was not suitable for that kind of fabric. Ironically the first robe dried with marvelous adhesion between decorations and fabric, so he actually had two perfectly usable robes. Anyway, the crown was also a challenge! We got a Burger King crown (did you know they'll give you one even if you don't eat there? I was pleasantly surprised). We painted it. The paint was so heavy, the crown started curling up. We had to cut out a new crown from a box we found in the basement.
Rowan loved painting it himself and choosing where the jewels would go.
Friday was preschool costume day, and that night we carved pumpkins with Uncle Tim, August, and Rachael. Rowan and I were a carving team, and thankfully he requested a "happy face" -- something I knew I could do. Ours is the middle one in this photo. Left to right, they're Uncle Tim's, Rachael's, mine and Rowan's, August's, and Daddy's.
Sunday evening after dinner, and after answering the door for many trick-or-treaters, we decided to take Rowan trick-or-treating himself. We weren't originally planning on this for a number of reasons, including that we didn't want him having tantrums to eat the candy (something we never have in the house), and we wanted him to have the fun of giving out snacks (pretzels and animal crackers were our treats this year) instead of receiving them. But after doing that for about an hour, he did decide that he'd like to go out, so we all threw on our costumes (seriously, in about 5 minutes we went from house clothes to trick-or-treat ready) and went out. Our neighborhood is awesome for trick-or-treating! I'm ashamed to say that we met a number of our neighbors for the first time this way, and I'm so glad we went out. Here's Rowan just as we were getting back to our house.
You can see all the rest of the pictures from Halloween in the online photo album. I've also posted a couple more albums: Rowan's trip to the science museum with his preschool and Gram as chaperone, plus our visit to the NC State Fair!
