The REST of the Story!

You’ve Got a Fanatic in Me

This is our TENTH year of doing a family costume and now we are all hopeless addicts, including the reticent papa, who this year sighed, "I figured I could fight it and you'd do it anyway or I could enjoy it!" So. . . we all enjoyed ourselves as I took a housework hiatus and dove into the sewing room abyss for a sewing binge that lasted five days and
. . . uh. . . big chunks of five nights.
   As we planned who would be what for our Toy Story Extravaganza, Ethan wanted to choose to be Zurg until Holden lamented, "But I never get to be evil!" So, it was decided that Holden would get to be the bad guy for once, and Ethan would be Rex. 

   Caleb wasn't thrilled about his part as Woody until I had painstakingly transformed yellow fabric into the yellow and red plaid for a perfect Woody shirt and then sewed up the cowboy vest, complete with a pull string on the back. He asked me if he could please try it on, and his eyes gleamed as he ran off to play with Eve, who had been dressed in her Jesse costume as soon as it was hot off the sewing machine a few hours earlier. When he came back from playing with Eve, Caleb said in his quiet way, "Hey, Mom. This costume is actually kind of fun." Every day after school until Halloween, he would sidle up to me and say cooly, "Hey, Mom. . . can I wear my costume again?" How could I NOT want to do this every year? 

   Peter was reticent to wear his Buzz costume for our costume debut at the ward party, but now he wears it for days (and nights), screaming when I have to peel it off to wash it. Sometimes I practically need the jaws of life to separate him from the space-suit. When he wakes up in the morning, he points fondly to his chest and repeats, “Buzz Li-yer, Buzz Li-year!” and then sticks one arm skyward and shouts in his two-year-old way, “To finity and ee-yond!”
  

    Mr Potato-head and I got a big kick out of the roasted spuds at our Ward Party and never tired of saying to friends, “I feel like such a cannibal!”

   You'd think that after gouging our feet on stray pins, discovering pieces of thread dangling from our clothing, and having a grouchy sleep-deprived mom for a week we would just as soon forget about our Halloween production for at least a few days. But dinner-time conversation keeps the thrill of the family costume alive with the kids constantly making creative suggestions for 2009. Eric's bright idea was to be "The Food Chain," with him as the carnivore on top, of course. I thought that "Evolution" might be fun, with Marie being a single-celled organism and then we'd work our way up to primates and then I would be the highest evolutionary example as "Mom." Maybe Rexburg isn't quite ready for that.