What Will He Be This Year?

Last year, he was an angel (and won a cutest award!). In 2007, he donned overalls and brought along his tools as Bob the Builder. In 2006, he was Kobe Bryant--eaten by a shark.

It was a lot of fun dressing up our little boy as different characters for Halloween. Now, we have a small girl who's joining in the fun. Costumes for Halloween have become more and more creative and imaginative. Now, they're not limited to the strictly scary ones, which is a good thing because some kids do get scared of them. And they're now available online in incostume.com. So whether our kids would go as superheroes, scary creatures, Winnie the Pooh & Piglet or whatever, we can be sure we can find the costume we want.

E's Costumes

My son is now starting to like dressing up, unlike when he was younger. He looks so cute when he does. On his first Halloween trick or treat, he dressed up in a shark costume but later changed into a basketball jersey because it was too hot in the costume. On his second trick-or-treat, instead of going for the usual store bought costumes, he wore an improvised one with overalls and some toy tools. When asked, we said that he was "Bob the Builder". :)

Costumes when he started toddler school include the following: Filipiniana costume for their "linggo ng wika" celebration -- we simply let him wear his Barong Tagalog (which he wore to my brother's wedding as the ring bearer). An Angel costume for their school trick-or-treat. He used that later at the village trick-or-treat and walked away with a special prize for one of the 10 cutest. He enjoyed being in costume by this time and actually insisted on wearing his halo and wings every chance he got! During his moving up day, he was the blue horse in their presentation. He was asked to wear blue polo and white pants. The school's artist designed headgears for the pupils, and his was, of course, a blue horse!

I wonder what costume we'll come up with this year. Whatever it is, I'm sure he'll have a blast with it!

Trick or Treat!

Ethan went trick or treating yesterday. Here is his costume:
He's the little boy in the angel costume. The photo was taken from his school halloween party. (Click on image to get a bigger view).

Lookit all the loot he got! (Again, please click on image for a bigger view)
The orange bag was the prize he got for being in the 10 cutest costumes. Not bad, noh, considering that there are more than 500 participants. :) Other categories were 10 scariest, 10 best United Nations costumes and 10 best Disney costumes.

It was fun, and all we had to do was provide some goodies for kids who pass by our house!

A spooky birthday celebration :)

My friend Clarice invited me to her birthday party last October 31. We, together with Kitte, Rhodora, Denise, Teenee, Monet, Abie and Diosa became close since the days of our wedding preps, having met through weddings @work 3 years ago.. We have kept in touch and have remained close, even though we don't get to see each other that much lately. The internet really brings people together. I wouldn't have known these great gals if it were,'t fot this modern wonder!

Anyway, I digress. Clarice, the birthday celebrant, is now a sought after wedding coordinator. She was a top ten w@w supplier last year! In fact, she's again in this year's list of the top ten suppliers! I'm so happy for her :)

The party was kinda last minute, so from the way she worded her email invitation to us, we thought that it was going to be a small, simple affair -- you know, one of the things I would throw on a last minute notice.

I thought wrong :)

We thought we went to the wrong place. The place was decorated with skulls, spider webs, a skeleton, and the lighting was muted. I have never gone to a BIRTHDAY party decorated in that way and we thought that somebody else was having a halloween party!

Well, Clarice was there, so it was definitely HER party. Well, it WAS October 31 so halloween decors WERE appropriate :)

Good food, nice though spooky ambiance, good conversation with good friends...I really enjoyed myself that evening. Didn't get to the Mongolian barbecue and the bar because we'd rather stay put and talk. We were seated with Fred and Teenee and we mostly talked about our kids :). Abie and Rey were not seated with us, but they came over to chat too.

Thanks, Clarice, for inviting us! Pahingi pictures ha?

Trick or Treat!

Last October 27 was the Saturday before November 1. Our village decided to hold our annual Halloween program on this day, since there was a long break after that.

They no longer allowed outsiders unlike the previous years. This was really good for us. What happened before was the outsiders ended up getting all the candy and eating all the food prepared since they all roamed the village trick o' treating while the village children were participating in the program for halloween. Last year, by the time the program finished, we hardly had any snacks left and when we roamed, most houses had already run out of treats! When I looked around, the unfamiliar faces also included adults in costume! Oh well.... We were only able to get 2 pcs of treats from a village of 300+ houses. Imagine that!

We didn't buy any special costume this year. We just decided to work with what we already have. Since Ethan had overalls in his wardrobe, we just decided to dress him in it. His toys included plastic tools (hammer, wrench, saw, drill) so we decided to let him bring it around. Tadahhh!!!! Meet "Bob the Builder"! Well, other people actually didn't think he was in costume, coz he looked like he was just wearing his regular clothes, which he was :). It was pretty "trying hard", if you get what I mean. It would probably be better if we put a hard hat on him, but knowing my son, that hat wouldn't last more than 5 seconds. :)

Oh, yaya was carrying Ethan while I registered at the front desk. When I turned around, I couldn't find them! I was frantic, even if I knew that the place was safe!

It turned out that Marvin Agustin (a local entertainer), made an appearance and people crowded around to have a picture taken with him. That included my star struck yaya who was easily convinced to have their picture taken. But of course since it was not our camera, we don't have a copy of the picture! Oh well, we'll just have to wait for our community paper. The photographers assured us that they will print the pics there.

We went around the village. Ethan had more candy this year! Much much more! His pumpkin basket was full, as well as an extra cloth bag that we brought along. He also got an orange balloon (this was actually his favorite treat). He seemed to enjoy this second Halloween more than the previous one. I guess it's both because of his age (he's now two) and because of the fact that we got more treats this year!

So, are we going to participate again next year? You betcha!