"I'll Get You My Pretty"

Melia has become OBSESSED with The Wizard of Oz.  Luckily the obsession has calmed down a bit and is not quite as prominent as it used to be, but she still LOOOOOOVES it.  So of course, she wanted to be Dorothy for Halloween.  And I must say, she made a pretty stinkin' cute Dorothy.

Here she is all dressed up, walking up to Missy's house to show off her costume.

Couldn't get any cuter!

She's got her little Toto in her basket and all.  (My extra-talented mom made Melia's costume and did a fabulous job, even down to the tiny details!)

 Grandma Place gave the kids Trick-or-Treat bags filled with prizes and they happened to contain wax lips with vampire fangs.  Melia thought those were pretty silly.

And she liked the vampire fangs even more!

Missy and I took the kids to Gardner Village to see the witches.  Melia is (also) obsessed with all things evil, so, naturally, she loves witches!  She frequently thanks Heavenly Father for "the evil witch" in her prayers.  Don't ask me where she gets that from, but she loves all things evil.  Whenever we watch movies she ALWAYS asks if there is a "bad guy" or an "evil witch" or a "mean lady."  Then she asks me to fast forward to that part.  Afterwards she just wants me to rewind back to it.  She just cares about the mean guys!  Lol!

Here are Melia and Brinley with one of the witches.  :)  (It was a little chilly, thus Melia's tights and Brin's sweat pants).

Melia was especially excited to see the witch riding a bicycle (like "Dorothy's witch").  So here's the Wicked Witch with the Cowardly Lion and Dorothy.

Here are all the kids with one of the witches.

Gardner Village Witch with Brinley, Evera, Melia and Colton.

The girls liked the witch that was fishing with TNT.

And Ev loved riding around in the stroller.

Dorothy and two witches.  :)

How fitting is this picture of Dorothy looking over the fence at the red barn?!

The girls loved the giant bell and insisted on climbing up there to ring it.

The bell was bigger than Melia!

Love that face.  :)

The big green witch with the giant toad was my favorite.

As we were leaving, we saw a REAL witch walking out of the Down to Earth home furnishings store.  Melia was so excited to see a REAL witch and kept asking me if she was a good witch or a bad witch.  You can tell by the look on Melia's face she was pretty excited to see her.

I told Melia to get closer so I could take a picture of her with the witch.  In spite of all of Melia's obsession with witches, it was apparent she was pretty scared of the big witch.  She would lean her hip closer but not actually MOVE closer to the witch.  Haha!  So the witch started imitating Melia and would lean closer to her and Melia would just lean further away.  It was pretty hilarious!

Then Melia started holding her dress closer to the witch, but still not actually moving HERSELF closer to the witch.  :)  The witch was hilarious and imitated her with that too.

And then more leaning in with her hip and away with her body to pretend she was getting closer for the picture.  :)  (When Melia sees this picture she says it's her doing her Dorothy walk.  If you've seen the Wizard of Oz you might recall how Dorothy walks down the yellow brick road crossing her feet over the other and skipping as she walks.  Melia has her own little imitation of the walk that she started all by herself where she walks crossing one foot in front of the other.  It's the cutest little strut, and she calls it her "Dorothy Walk.")

Here's Little Man trying to eat his badge of courage.

He thinks he's pretty silly.

The real kickers of our Halloween this year, were our "family costumes."  It was really funny how it all began.  Melia wanted to be Dorothy, then I found a little lion costume for Evera at Costco and thought it'd be perfect to make Ev the Cowardly Lion.  I remembered I had this old pink prom dress of mine in the closet downstairs and thought it'd make the PERFECT Glinda costume.  I was joking about how I was going to wear it, but wasn't really serious.  The more I joked about it, the more people started insisting I had to really do it.

One day I was talking to Mandy at one of Spencer's football games.  I told her about the costumes and she said, "Well what will Spencer be?  He needs to match!"  So we started brainstorming and I said he could be a flying monkey (as of course the Tin Man and Scarecrow would not be cool enough to wear to his football party).  My one of my sister's kids had once been a flying monkey so we used his costume as a template and I spray painted the red onto the vest and Mike made the wings out of cardboard.  Then Mandy got him a gorilla costume to wear underneath. 

Mandy started suggesting we needed her dog Abby to come with us to be Toto.  Then she started joking about how funny it'd be if she dressed up like the Wicked Witch and came with us.  The jokes continued for a few weeks about how we were all going to go trick-or-treating together and be Wizard of Oz characters.  She kept telling Melia she was going to be the Wicked Witch.  One day Melia was telling all her friends she was going to be Dorothy for Halloween and Mandy was going to be the Wicked Witch.  I texted her and told her how Melia was telling all her friends that.  I thought she'd get a kick out of it.  She immediately called me and said, "I really will go trick-or-treating with you!"  It was all kindof history from there.

Mike was the most hesitant about the idea, but when both his wife and ex wife were willing to go along with it, he had to concede.  :)  Mike became the Tin Man (insisting he could NOT be the Scarecrow because of Fiyero and Elphaba in Wicked).  Garrett (SHOCKINGLY) agreed to do "family pictures" with us and dress up as the Scarecrow, although he didn't actually go trick or treating with us.  I think it'll be a pretty fun memory for Spencer, and for Melia too!

The handsomest Tin Man and the cutest Cowardly Lion I've ever seen.

Wicked Witch and her Flying Monkey attacking the Scarecrow and pulling out all his straw!

Glinda tickling Dorothy

Dorothy, Glinda the Good Witch, and Toto

The Wicked Witch of the West flying on her broomstick...(or something like that)

It was fun to go trick-or-treating and seeing everyone's reactions to our whole clan! (Mike is taking the picture.)

Here's the Tin Man pushing the stroller.

We went around to a lot of houses, although Mandy and Spencer left after only about an hour of houses because Spence wanted to get some trick-or-treating in with his friends at his house.  At one point we got to this one CREEPY house where we had to go into the garage to get the candy.  There were sheets hanging in the garage with creepy glowing paint on them.  There was a black light and a smoke machine going.  Then inside the garage there was this creepy guy dressed up in a super creepy costume.  I thought the kids would cry, but Melia just sat there stone faced the whole time and from the second we left she just kept insisting the rest of the night that we go back to that house!  She is such a weird kid!  I do not know where this obsession with evil has come from...should I be worried?!

Here are the kids after the fact.  Melia was enjoying her loot--lovin' her orange sucker, and Ev was out cold.

With sticky orange sucker all over his face as he snoozed away.  :)

Happy Halloween from our BIG HAPPY FAMILY!  ;)