Playing dress up

Ready for Oz!

Clay and I had TWO opportunities to throw on costumes this fall!Not only did we get to dress up as super-ninjas for Halloween (more on that later), we also got to spend an evening in Oz for the fall festival at the Mississippi Children's Museum.

Clay has loved this museum since it opened. We have a family membership there, and we even held Clay's birthday party there earlier this year. When we heard their annual fall festival was going to be a big, costumed version of the Wizard of Oz, we were in! I threw on last year's witch costume, and with a little makeup, a floppy hat, and some hay, we turned Clay into a scarecrow.

We had a blast at the party, which offered food, special activities and Oz-themed crafts. We also loved seeing tons of other kids and parents in their costumes. A local high school was putting on The Wizard of Oz as a stage play in the next couple of weeks, and so their costumed cast (and, I'll bet, some of their cool painted backdrops) were throughout the museum. Just really, really fun and cool. We had a great time!

For Halloween this year, Clay wanted to be a ninja. No problem! (Ninja costumes are warm and

The Bradshaw ninjas . . .

comfortable, and since we had a cold snap right around Halloween - and bone-chilling wind that night - it turned out to be PERFECT!)

Halloween was really fun in our neighborhood this year! Our little crew carved two pumpkins and decorated to the hilt. As a neighborhood, we'd organized a bit ahead of time. Several houses hosted "attractions" for the kids!

. . . not so silent, not so deadly.

We had a beanbag toss, a family photo booth, one of those "put your hands in and guess the creepy thing you're touching" table, and I set up a table and handed out warm apple cider and Halloween snack mix. (We tried to get a neighborhood hayride, too, with no luck. Liability issues, I guess.) It was fun! We trick or treated with Clay and easily covered half the neighborhood before calling it a night. Our little ninja came home with an impressive haul (nearly half of which we sent to school the next Monday, just to reduce the diet carnage at our house).