Unfortunately, Halloween beat us this year.
Those who know Elise and I know that we don't like to do anything half-assed. When asked what he wanted to be for Halloween, Sam gave us what should have been an obvious response, "Thomas the Train". Did we then run down to Toys 'R' Us to buy him a latex and foam Thomas the Train costume? No, that would have been the easy way out. That's not how the Hanna's roll. We went directly to Michael's and Home Depot, buying metal pipe and paint. We were going to build Thomas the Train.
We had done it before. Reference last Halloween. When asked what he wanted to be for Halloween last year, Sam answered, "Bus". (brief aside, "bus" was the only word Sam knew at the time). So we built a bus. But then, we were a lot less busy last Halloween than we were this Halloween.
After immunizations (including a yellow fever shot on Monday that staggered us all, sore-armed, into Wednesday), a wedding to edit, swim lessons, a romantic evening spent listening to the melodious plinking of Jim Brickman playing piano in a barn and the Rally to Restore Sanity, Saturday had arrived and nary a bolt, screw, lugnut or whistle had been fashioned.
We woke early on Saturday (we wake early everyday), and feverishly started construction. Elise hot-glue-gunned cotton balls to a onesie. Pete was going to be a lamb. (This got done and he was a hit, so at least one of them had a costume. Unfortunately, neither of us had the prescience then to realize the obvious...that Pete was going to pick every single cotton ball off the onesie throughout the course of the evening. Our passage was marked by a trail of fraying cotton balls.) I got started on Thomas.
It didn't take long for me to realize I had bitten off more than I could masticate in a single day. I felt like a contestant on Project Runway, painting and cutting and gluing feverishly right up until we had to rush off to the runway. Though there were points in the afternoon when I legitimately thought we were going to finish, when 4:15 rolled around and we were supposed to meet our friends to go "trunk-or-treating" at 4:45 and, though Thomas had a face and wheels, none of the train had been actually put together, we threw in the towel.
Thankfully, our friends had a back-up costume for Sam. He, appropriately enough, was a train engineer. I don't know if the fact that they had a back-up costume at the ready spoke to a lack of faith in our industriousness. I'm guessing there was some behind the scenes texting I was intentionally not made aware of so as not to let it be known that not finishing the costume was an option. It doesn't matter. I'm just grateful they bailed us out...and brought chicken fingers, to boot.
In the mayhem, we never got photos of Sam or Pete. But I did stop to take a photo of the half-constructed Thomas...
Sadly, Sam didn't get to be Thomas the Train, but, more importantly, at least he didn't look like this dork...
As always, expect great things in the future.
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