Although Halloween has never been my favorite holiday, I want to tell you about a unique costume that I made for my children! But first, a little background. I never could get into all the spooky stuff, even as a kid. I hated scary stories and did not like "practical" jokes! When I was about nine or ten, I had been trick 'r treating for the evening. We were on our way home, actually just down the street from my home, when we walked past some bigger boys just standing there. I didn't think anything of it, because parents and older siblings often stood at the curb waiting for the little ones to come back from a front door. All of the sudden, one of the boys ripped my sack of goodies from my hands and ran! I was horrified and scared to death. I ran home crying. My sister and mom tried to smooth it over by dividing up all of my sister's loot, but it didn't do much to soothe my little heart! To this day, I preferred that my children and grandchildren attend a closed party than to go out on the streets; that is basically what my grandchildren do now too. [In a former post, I mentioned the slime time party we will be having at our church on Halloween.]
What I do like about Halloween is the costumes. I used to love making the costumes for my own children. I remember one year when we lived in the mountains, and there was nowhere to go treating, my children went to a local party at the armory, that the school put on! I had six children, and making costumes was sort of out of the question by reason of finances and time. So I decided to make a costume that fit all of my kids at once!
We gathered one cardboard box for each child, took them out on the porch and began to paint them. We painted with brown and orange, sort of a scaly pattern. We put a fringe on the box bottom, which was actually the top of the costume. We fashioned a tail on the last box that was jointed and that moved freely. Then we fashioned a scary head on the first box and tied all the boxes together with rope. Yep, you guessed it, we made a dragon! Each kid put the box over himself, crouched down and played follow the leader! We were a hit at the party's parade of costumes!
