Halloween Group Costumes

I love group costumes. We've been doing group costumes since the first Halloween with our daughter. Since that Halloween I have bought her costumes (and dress up clothes) at Children's Orchard, my favorite resale clothing store. I look forward to the day in September when they put out the costumes. That first Halloween I found a cute lion costume. What immediately came to my mind is "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!". I blame my dad. Wizard of Oz is his favorite movie. So Melodie was the cutest cowardly lion, we bought a scarecrow outfit for Rocky and a good friend made my Dorothy costume (I needed to nurse in it and all the Dorothy costumes I could find to buy were one piece). This was also the first year we went to a Disney Halloween party. At the time it was at DCA and called Mickey's Halloween Treat.

The next year (2007) was the first year we went to Mickey's Halloween Treat with my whole family. It was such fun to go with a big group in costumes of the same theme.

My mom had previously made the Snow White costume. For this party she also made all the dwarf costumes (except for the Grumpy costume which we borrowed from a friend) and the prince costume. I bought a black cloak for the Old Hag costume. Melodie was the poison apple. I found a devil costume at Children's Orchard which I reworked to be an apple. I took off the tail and horns and put on a stem and leaf. I also stuffed her with padding.

In 2008 the party name changed to Mickey's Trick or Treat Party. This time we went with friends. Our theme was based around Melodie's costume (guess where I found it?). When I saw it, I knew she would be adorable in it! I don't have many good pictures because this is the night I ended up in the emergency room because I was in pain. Turned out I had an ectopic pregnancy and had surgery the next day. I barely made it home in time for Halloween day. Anyway, Melodie's 50's costume was pink, so the first thing that came to mind were the Pink Ladies in Grease.

 

We went with an even bigger group of friends in 2009. This time I found a few costumes I liked, and Melodie was starting to develop opinions of her own, so I let her choose between a few. She chose a purple witch costume, so our theme was witches and wizrds. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the group all together.

 

 

2012 was especially fun because we went to Walt Disney World in Florida called Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. This year Melodie wanted to be Dorothy, and luckily I found a costume at Children's Orchard (you never know what you will find or not find). Rocky reused his scarecrow costume, and we knew we needed a witch. That left three of us (none of which wanted to be a lion or Glinda). Three was the perfect number for the Lollipop Guild munchkins.

The next year the prices got too high for us, so we didn't go to a Disney Halloween party. Melodie wanted to be a witch again, so Rocky and I kind of went with a theme. I was Maleficent (a wicked sorceress is a kind of witch, right?) and Rocky was Gandalf (the wizard for Lord of the Rings, which my husband is slightly obsessed with).
We actually thought we wouldn't go to another Disney party again, but my mom and one sister really wanted to go this year. There's even more of us now, so we needed a Disney movie with a lot of characters. We wanted the same reaction we got when we went in 2007. We received applause as we walked around and people wanted to take pictures of us. It was such fun! We ended up selecting Peter Pan (yay! my favorite!).

So here's how everyone is related to me and their characters:
a younger brother - John
a younger sister - Wendy
a nephew - Michael
brother-in-law - Indian Chief
a younger sister - Tiger Lily
a younger sister - Nana
a niece - Tinker Bell
a younger brother - Peter Pan
me - Tic Toc the croc
husband - Captain Hook
step dad - Smee
mom - a pirate
niece and daughter - mermaids

Huge props to my teenage brothers, one who wore a nightgown and one who wore tights. Such team players!

We borrowed the Captain Hook costume. One sister bought the pink pjs for "Michael" and the Tink costume. My other sister and I had pretty simple costumes that were more representations than actual costumes since 1) it was too for a full body furry costume and 2) I couldn't find anything in maternity. So for Nana she wore a brown shirt with dog ears and the nurse cap. For Tic Toc I wore a green shirt with a crocodile hat (a random find) and a clock necklace ('cause he swallows a clock!). I painted the stripes on the Smee shirt. My mom put together her pirate costume with various clothing choices. The big thing is that she made all the other costumes (John nightgown, Wendy dress, Indian Chief shirt, Tiger Lily dress, Peter Pan shirt and the mermaids).

We got amazing reactions at Mickey's Halloween Treat (another name change and this time at Disneyland). Applause, pictures and tons of comments. So much fun! We didn't see another themed group as big as ours. Hopefully we will do it again someday (my vote would be for Alice in Wonderland).

 

 

A Sister!

I'm well into second trimester, and I'm finally feeling better. Last week I had the ultrasound to find out the gender of the baby. Rocky and I knew for a few days before telling Melodie and close friends. We wanted to make it fun! I baked a cake that Melodie cut into to see if it was blue (she's having a brother) or pink (she's having a sister).

 

 

She was thrilled it was pink. She's going to have a sister.
We had to keep it secret for another week. We were going to be seeing family from out of town and thought we should do something fun for them too. I made this shirt for Melodie:

Grandma and Auntie Lori noticed quickly!

 

 

This was such a fun way to include Melodie in the announcement. She got lots of hugs.

4th of July

 Melodie and Rocky spent the day swimming at a friend's house. That night we went to a friend's house for BBQ and fireworks. Fireworks aren't legal in our city, but they are in the next city over. I think this is the fourth year we've spent 4th of July at her house. But first, I had to do Melodie's holiday hair.

I took inspiration from one of my favorite girl hair style sites, Cute2TryHairdos. I got all the decorations from a dollar store bow that I took apart. I've only been doing these fun hairstyles for a little over a year, but I love them. Melodie really looks forward to the holiday ones. Here's the one from last year.

 I love making cute food, so I was bummed not to make any this year. I just wasn't feeling up to it, so I'll share what I've made previously.

2009 Not a great picture, but mine are the red and blue star shaped rice krispie treats.
2008 & 2010 were cookies, but I didn't get good pictures.

These are from last year. I love the cookie/candy bouquet. Maybe, because I made two things last year, that makes up for this year. But back to this year. Good food, great people, and fun fireworks celebrating our freedom. Can't ask for more.

Announcement

America Week

While I'm still going to try to follow my schedules I've planned, I'm not going to post them. The reality is that I've been pretty sick and not able to follow them as much as I would like.
 So now for America Week. Here's what we did on Monday and Tuesday. First we read about why we celebrate the 4th of July. We read the Declaration on Independence (I bought a poster of it) and talked about how it was written in 1776. I found this website called Liberty's Kids. Melodie loved watching the "Now & Then" episodes.
 We also learned about fireworks by watching 3, 2, 1 Firework. I was surprised at how interested Melodie was in this. She loved going to the firework stand to pick out our fireworks for this year.
 We did our weekly alphabet, of course.

 And that's it for the beginning of the week!

The Rest of Bird Week

Wednesday
 Melodie loved watching all the bird songs on youtube.  Then we read this book:

This is the second Just Ask book we've read and we really enjoy them. After reading about why birds sing, we listened to bird sounds on the Canadian Museum of Nature website. It's actually a matching game. Mel enjoyed it so we did all four habitats.
 For the craft we were going to make bottle cap birds. I even saved bottle caps, but I couldn't find small bottle caps. They were all the same size, which would have made pretty silly looking birds. So Melodie cut out circles instead.

With the extra feathers she made a random picture.
 She played to games on the computer and liked both of them. Shapes: Starfall and letter matching: abcya.com. The letter matching was too easy for her, so she chose some other games to try on that website too.
Thursday
  We made two kinds of bird feeders. One kind was out of toilet paper rolls and one was out of bagels.

 I haven't been feeling well all week. She's in her swim suit because this was after her swimming lessons, but before going to a friends' house (they have a pool) that were going to watch her while I went to the doctor. On Friday we didn't get a chance to do anything (I was so bummed because the fun food was so cute!) because after swimming lessons I had to go back to the doctor (auntie watched her) and then she had tap. After that she wanted to stay with her auntie the rest of the night. Well, maybe we can do the fun food another time just for fun.

Bird Week Has Started

 We started by Melodie doing her ABC's on cutouts of birds.  I hope we can do this every week. We love it!

 We tried playing Chicken Stacker, but it kept freezing on us. We'll try again tomorrow.
 We watched the youtube video of a chick hatching. Melodie thought the chicks were so cute.
 She spent a majority of her time painting her bird house. She has been waiting months to do this, so I let her take as long as she wanted.

 While she was in the middle of painting, a neighbor knocked on our door. She told us to come outside quickly. This is what we saw:

I have lived in this neighborhood most of my life and I've never seen ducks walking down the street. We see them a lot at Disneyland, but it was so strange to see them walking through our neighborhood.

We got a little nervous when the crossed the street. Melodie wanted to follow them for a while, so we did. Perfect sighting for bird week!
 On Tuesday we watched Chicken Little. I gave Mel the choice between Dumbo and Chicken Little and that's what she chose.
 After that we read about birds and feathers on Kidzone and read about the types of feathers and the parts of a feather on ASU School of Life Sciences. I printed the worksheets on that website and she did all the labeling.

And then we did the craft project. Mel spent hours painting with feathers.

She thought it was fun using both sides of the feather and made several pictures.
 When Rocky came home from work they hung her bird house outside. I also bought a new hummingbird feeder (We had one a while ago and it broke. Since then she would constantly ask for a new one.) so they made hummingbird food and hung that outside too.