Our Halloween fun started a day early, with the traditional Amaro Halloween Bash. This year we partied on Sunday the 30th which turned out to be a great decision.
Violet and Daniel wore their "real" costumes - Octimus Prime (complete with "fire gloves") and... Ice-Cream. She saw this costume with Fernando at Target a few weeks back and just fell in love. It is pretty stinking cute. We even found some plaid shoes on clearance to match. The cutest part was that Daniel just wanted to "save the day" and "keep us safe" - specifically the ice cream. So they walked around as a team, her pointing out imaginary monsters and him putting his arm around her second scoop and reasurring her.
The Amaros made their grand entrance (Mema and Papa were Mustard and Ketchup... TK was a Chola... Quito and Uncle Chris were a 1920s couple... Fernando was Obi-Juan-Kenobe and I was Princess Lei-a) and we took the traditional photos. Then we did the traditional next step - taking the uncomfortable costumes OFF and having a big dinner together.
After dinner we played with some party favors and tried out a new-to-us game: Bobbing for Apples. TK rocked it, Papa struggled, and Fernando decided to show his skills and plunged his whole head in the bucket (much to the delight of his shrieking children). Naturally Daniel and Violet wanted to try - Daniel managed to get two (by the stems I think!) and Violet unfortunately cannot eat apples. So we found a pear and made do. (Side note: Pears don't float.)
The next night, on the 31st, we headed to the annual church tailgate event. About 30 minutes before we had to leave, both kids changed their mind on the costumes. While looking through the family costume bucket, they discovered LAST year's costumes and begged to wear those instead. So we squished a nearly 5-year-old Daniel into a 2T Batman suit and a 2 1/2 year-old Violet into an 18 month Tiger costume. (Thankfully, Daniel felt a little too squished and opted to change back.) But Violet stuck with the (high water) tiger and let me put some fun makeup on her.
Daniel was extremely bold, telling everyone he saw that he loved their costume, showing off his costume and trick-or-treating car to car with glee. But Violet was focused on one thing: A sucker. She can't have a lot of the regular candy, but I promised her a dum-dum sucker. She just might have been the happiest girl on earth that night.
Both kids ended up with way more candy in their bucket than I would EVER let them eat, but were perfectly happy to give it away. In fact, I think they had more fun giving the candy to other kids than getting it in the first place.
Anyway. Halloween 2011 was a success in the Amaro house. We're already making plans for next year!
