Trick-or-Treating (8)

Really?  Have I really put up seven posts in a row that focus solely on my sons' Halloween costumes of yore?  (R and K, are you sure you're not getting tired of this yet?) Some of you out there are probably thinking, "It's not like her kids even had the greatest Halloween costumes in the world!  She was a lazy costume-maker!  I've seen WAY cooler costumes!"

You're right, you know.  Compared to some of the stupendous Halloween costumes I've seen in my day, the ones my boys wore weren't always blue ribbon-worthy.  But I always thought they looked absolutely and positively adorable when they dressed up to go out trick-or-treating.  And that's my prerogative as their mom, I guess.

My husband and I aren't big Halloween people ourselves.  I mean, we loved getting into it when our kids were young, but we've never been the type to host or attend adult dress-up parties every year, the way many of our friends do.  (What I'm trying to say is that we're a bit boring.)  But back when my husband was an aviator in the Navy, before we had kids (and we were just twenty-something kids ourselves), we did dress up once for a squadron Halloween event.  I thought I'd post that incredibly embarrassing 1982 picture here for posterity, to prove to our boys that once upon a time, their parents were young, too.  And that we could be crazy with the best of them.

I don't know why we don't look rounder.  I remember making these big, round felt pillows (notice that they have brown fabric on the inside--the chocolate centers!); but I think we tied the front and back parts at the waist instead of letting them hang in all their circular glory, and we ended up looking like the messed-up, misshapen M&M's you sometimes find in the bag, the ones that you don't dare eat.  These costumes are very scary, I think, for two reasons: 1) we're both wearing black tights (my husband might kill me for posting this picture); and 2) it was the era of men's shorty-shorts (he's definitely going to kill me).

Now you see why we don't dress up every year.  The potential for post-Halloween humiliation is enormous.

But I'm supposed to be posting pictures of the boys, not us; so here's a gem from 2000 starring son #3 (14) and son #4 (almost 13), dressed to impress the ladies for a junior high dance at their Catholic grade school:

Son #3 was a big fan of the whole pirate thing, so this costume was a natural choice for him.  To achieve this look, all I had to do was go up in the attic and find his dad's old jacket from his Navy dress blues uniform, and then fashion some epaulets for it out of shiny gold fabric and fringe.  The party store hat had actually already been worn by son #5 in 1995 when he was a pint-sized pirate, but it must have been "one-size-fits-all," because it worked for a much-larger-sized teenage pirate, too.  (Love those recycled costume elements!)  I did buy the requisite pirate's eye patch for this tall, lanky buccaneer (and I think there was a plastic hook for his hand that came with it as well).  The finishing touch, which hadn't been added yet here, was a Beanie Baby parrot perched rather precariously atop one of the epaulets.  (Yikes [shudder]...remember the Beanie Baby craze?)

Son #4 is sporting one of his dad's old Navy flight suits, his dog-tags, and some aviator's shades to channel Tom Cruise in "Top Gun"--certainly not the first time those flight suits had come in handy as costume material around Halloween.  Talk to him, Goose.

Wow...look at these guys!  They're a couple of junior high heartthrobs.  Move over, Justin Beiber!  They must have had to swat the girls away like flies!  (Mom's a little biased.)

Okay, tomorrow is the last day of this "Trick-or-Treating"/ old-costume-pictures theme.  I'm going to have to scour my photo albums for a good finale!