Early Halloween

A few weekends ago Phil had to work, and on Sunday the base had a family day to celebrate Halloween.  So I decked the boys out in their costumes,  met up with Phil at work, and we went trick-or-treating on base.  It was a gorgeous day and the boys had a fun time wearing their costumes, getting candy, and playing in the squadron.

My friend, Andrea, has 4-year-old twin boys and last year they dressed up as trains for Halloween.  And not just any trains... characters from the Thomas the Tank Engine series.  Since my boys love the Thomas trains almost as much as Andrea's boys, I asked her if she would mind if I stole her train idea for the boys this year.  Of course she said it was fine, and her boys actually went as trains again this year, too.  We made the train parts out of cardboard boxes, most of which we were able to find at Costco for free.  Emmett and Jackson were the characters that Andrea's boys were last year, so she was able to help me a lot with the construction of the costumes.  Jackson is Thomas, Emmett is Toby the Steam Tram (he looks a lot like a box car), and Andrea's boys are Gordon and Henry, the biggest engines.  :)  I thought they all looked absolutely adorable in their get-ups!

Here are the boys the night that we cut the holes for their head and arms.  I was SO afraid that Jackson wouldn't wear the box, since he's usually timid about things, but all we had to do was offer him an M&M to try it on the first time and then he loved it.  

This is what Jackson did when I asked him to turn to the side...

I loved them in the boxes even before they were decorated!  And here they are before we left for the base...

I love these next two pictures of Jackson looking cross-eyed at Thomas's funnel...

Emmett wasn't a huge fan of wearing the box, but he really loves looking at Toby.  Every time he sees it he yells and points.  :)

Here are a bunch of other fun pics from the day...

The boys also had train hats to go with their overalls, but the ones I bought were adult size and way big on them.  They would fall down when the boys walked and make it hard for them to see, so they didn't wear them very long.  

"Toby" got a little frustrated because his hands couldn't reach his mouth to allow him to munch on pretzels, so to avoid a major meltdown we took the box off for a while.  :)

Here we all are after meeting up with our other train friends, "Gordon" and "Henry".  This picture was taken right before "Toby" tripped and fell face-forward.  It was the funniest thing!  The front of the box landed smack on the ground and his feet were still on the ground, but his head and arms were sticking straight out from the holes.  Everyone around us was laughing!!  Luckily, E wasn't hurt at all and we could laugh without feeling too guilty. :)

We wanted to get a picture of all of the trains in a line, but since we were walking quite a long way around the base Emmett didn't wear Toby very often.  We had to carry E a lot and it's pretty impossible to carry him with the Toby costume on.  Plus, like I said earlier, he didn't love wearing the box for very long.  :)  So we settled for a picture of three of the four.  I was really proud of Thomas and Toby until I saw how well Gordon and Henry were constructed!  They looked awesome!

After this picture, the boys were d.o.n.e with the costumes and we met some firemen, got a pumpkin, and left to get some lunch.  It was a fun morning, and it was great to be able to spend a working Sunday with Dad!

I just have to end by saying the Emmett is not nearly as grumpy as he looks in all of the pictures I've posted lately!  I was just reading over this post and realized that he's hardly smiling in any of them!  He's usually very happy and goofy... I guess he's just not into smiling for pictures nowadays.  Just didn't want you to think he was depressed or something.   :)