i play dress up too

and to prove it…

When I was a teacher, we used to dress up each year. As a mom, I don’t do it that often.

One year, I was working in Jacob’s class so I pulled out one of my old costumes. He LOVED it. So I wore it trick or treating that year too.

Sorry, best picture I could come up with for 2007…Alice in Wonderland with my three little spidermen…

 

This year they asked again…so I told them I could be Alice in Wonderland or I had a Snow White costume in my closet too. The vote was Snow White.

(Side note…when I taught I was in Room 7. My school decided to have a themed Halloween…dress up the whole class as your favorite literary characters. My students chose to be Dwarfs…as in Snow White and the Dwarfs. I had a few talented moms help to sew boot covers and felt hats, we made cotton ball beards. It was so cute. As a surprise, I changed into my Snow White at lunch and went to pick up the kids after recess. It actually took them a minute to realize that I was their teacher!! We rocked the Halloween parade as “Snow Worden and the Room 7 Dwarves” Get it?)

This takes more effort since I have to actually put makeup on or I look like a freak with the black wig on!

And here we all are at the same house…three years later!

Sam doesn’t have to be carried anymore (although he begs for it…he’s such the baby of the family!! And by that I don’t mean that he is a baby…but that he likes to milk it!!), he actually says Trick or Treat and thank you (along with a long diatribe about who he and his brothers are dressed up as). My boys are growing up!

We started a new tradition this year. The “Switch Witch”. I know a lot of you already do it or something like it, but for some reason I hadn’t tried it. It worked like a charm…and my kids are already talking about it for next year.

Here’s the deal. I let them each pick out 20 of their favorite candies and pour the rest into a big bag. They got to pick out one more to eat that night. (Yes, they are totally satisfied with that one…didn’t even bat an eye or scream for more). The 20 favorites go in a ziplock with their name on it for after school treats over the next few weeks. The big bag of others are for the Switch Witch. I told them that after they were in bed and all the trick or treaters were done, we would put the bag on the porch. The Switch Witch comes and night and collects the candy and leaves them a present. My boys said “just like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus”…exactly!

In reality Daddy took the bag to work so that Mommy and Daddy didn’t eat it while sitting on the couch at night. And so the kids can’t beg and beg for weeks and weeks for just one more piece of candy!

Of course, I had planned ahead and purchased $10 items that I knew they would love. J-boy (aka Harry Potter) got a Harry Potter Lego, T-man (aka Red Power Ranger) got a jumbo set of skinny markers and S-bam (aka Woody) got a Toy Story 3 Lego set. Nothing over $10. Now, I’m aware this just cost me more money…but it’s saving me on the sugar high and crappy feelings after inhaling it all.

I took their trick or treat bags and put the gifts in there and then hung them from the banister. When they woke up this morning and came downstairs, the big bag of candy was gone (in Dad’s car) and the gifts were there. They were over the top excited.

Totally doing that again next year!!

Kristen