Our local youth group organized a Halloween party and Trunk-or-Treat for the kids, so we took the girls to be a part of the fun on Halloween night! Dan decorated our trunk for Trunk-or-Treat, and was excited to show off his creation while handing out candy.
Our little Fit turned into a monster for the night!
Owin and the youth group leaders did such a great job of decorating!
Mio shouted “skeleton!” “ghost!” “bat!”, naming each decoration she spotted.
She REALLY wanted to go inside the “mystery room” that was locked up.
Peeking in.
Mirei was her typical exploring self, crawling everywhere.
Crawling and walking in the kitchen:
Mio participating in Trunk-or-Treat
Happy to get more candy!
Getting a photo with zombie hunter Owin
Mirei standing tall!
They had set up fun little games and activity stations outside.
Mio playing the fishbowl game.
Mirei crawling with baby Alex, who is a few months older than her.
My sweet little shrimp!
They had a photographer at the party, who took photos of everyone against a backdrop… Mio took full advantage — she kept going back in front of the camera, and even jumped in front of other people getting their photo taken and ruining their photos! She was so hyper at the party! (Special thanks to Yuseki Ota Photography for the pictures below.)
I realized that photos of the four of us are rare these days… so it was nice to get a family photo!
Showing off the girls’ sushi costumes
Posing like a pro in front of the camera!
There were a bajillion photos of her at the end…
She demanded, “Take a picture!” to the photographer. Little Miss Bossypants…
This might be my favorite!
A group photo with everyone who was in costume.
Thank you to Owin and all the other youth group members who did such an awesome job planning and organizing the Halloween party! Our whole family thoroughly enjoyed it — Mio didn’t go to sleep until 11pm that night because she was so excited from it.
Happy Halloween! Our girls’ costumes this year are nigiri sushi: Mio is salmon, and Mirei is shrimp! They are just so cute that I could gobble them up…
This was my first time making their costumes and while it was a long and challenging process because I don’t have a sewing machine and had to hand-sew everything, it helped that Mio was really excited about the idea of being sushi for Halloween and kept excitedly exclaiming “Mio going to be SAH-MON SUSHI!!!” during the weeks leading up to Halloween. She was definitely my cheerleader and motivator to get the costumes completed and not give up! I’m pretty pleased with the final result, and the girls (well… Mio at least) seem to really like it! I don’t know if I’ll attempt to make another costume on my own again, though, until I have a sewing machine… I kept getting frustrated towards the end that it would have been faster and cleaner-looking if I had one! For those who want to know, I followed this awesome tutorial (note: it’s in Hebrew, so you’ll need the help of Google Translate!) that I found via Pinterest, and added some customizations of my own (I sewed the “rice” body from some white chenille fabric, and added green felt “baran”/grass to the headband, behind the wasabi and ginger). The costumes have definitely been a hit at the Halloween parties and events we’ve gone to this year, and it was a welcome departure from the typical princesses and fairies that we dressed Mio in the past couple years.
Hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween weekend!
Last Saturday, we were invited to a pumpkin carving party with the Lee family! There were lots of Halloween-themed treats and games for the little kids, and our whole family had a great time taking part in the festivities with friends. Stephanie and Chwan were wonderful hosts and really threw an awesome Halloween party full of fun for all ages!
A decorate-your-own-cupcake station! Such a great idea.
Delicious Halloween treats!
Mio checking out the cupcake spider.
Mimi holding Mirei 🙂
Mio sharing a pizza with Daddy
Mirei loved exploring in the new environment!
Mio’s decorated cupcake
Mio with her cupcake that she decorated!
There were lots of cool Halloween games that Stephanie set up for the kids.
Dan with our nigiri girls
Our girls dressed as sushi! We’ll have to post better photos of the costumes later.
Mio loved playing with Danny’s hammer toy
Mio decorated her pumpkin with these cat face foam stickers.
The carved pumpkins! Everyone did such a great job carving!
Dan carved the raven one (in the very back). Good job, hubby!
Happy Halloween! This year marks our first Halloween together as a family of three! Halloween is one of my favorite festivities of the year, and I love thinking of creative costumes every time. I especially like costumes that go together in some sort of a theme and last Halloween, I was just at the beginning of my second trimester so I was pregnant Quinn and Dan was Finn from the TV show Glee. This year, Dan was Mario from Super Mario Brothers, I was Princess Peach, and Mio was… ::drumroll please:: Toad (the toadstool mushroom)! Dan and I had actually thought of the idea of being Mario and Peach for Halloween and had prepared our costumes two years ago, but I got deathly sick that Halloween and so we hadn’t been able to use them! But I suppose it was for the better, because our costume idea was made exponentially better with the addition of Toad Mio!
We had a busy Halloween weekend — on Saturday, Dan and his coworker friend co-hosted a baby-friendly Halloween party in the neighborhood, and on Sunday we drove into the city for an evening of Halloween bowling in the Presidio with our friends from Nakayoshi! Check out all the photos of the Halloween fun from this past weekend…
Mio and I as Toad and Princess Peach.
Cedar was an alligator, and Cristina was the alligator tamer.
Mio looking up to Cedar.
Toad Mio with Mario Daddy.
Standing with some help from Daddy.
She was a little overwhelmed by all the people...
Jasmine and Emme, the older girls at the party.
Pocahontas Sofia pointing... adorable!
Going after Mario's fireball.
Kayo and Jinwoo.
S & S!
Gorgeous view of the skyline and San Francisco city lights, taken from the balcony.
A family picture at the end of the night.
Bowling at the Presidio Bowling Center with Nakayoshi. (I believe this is the first time we’ve taken Mio into the city!)
The Toad mushroom hat we had originally bought for Mio.
The hat was ginormous and way too big on her, so we opted for a different one that was a little more manageable...
...much better!
Jamie lives in San Francisco now! She's my dear friend from Virginia Tech. I'm so thrilled that she's in the area now!
Mio got lots of lovin' from her Nakayoshi aunties and uncles.
Mio's first time meeting Graig... and she loves him already!
Wow, look at that chin. Fat angle much? hahaha*
My happy mushroom, aglow under the black lights.
Graig was so good with her!
The masked men: army man, wolf, and storm trooper.
Basketball star Graig and Little Red Riding Hood Aileen (with mushroom hat)
My new friend Hisae-san! Loved her hat!
With lovely Sam... so glad we got to see her!
With Haruka and Aileen! Mio has known them since she was one month old! 😀
Standing around.
"There's a smile!"
She looks like she's about to break into a dance.
Mio's first encounter with a bowling ball.
Jason took this cool picture of Mio in front of the bowling lanes!
She's loving it! She is as round as a bowling ball.
There she goes, scrunching her face again in an all-out smile...
Mio loves Auntie Jamie!
Couldn't resist putting the giant mushroom hat on her one last time...
Hope everyone has a fun Halloween! Perhaps next year Mio can go trick-or-treating!!! I’m already thinking of more family costume ideas….
Happy Halloween! Halloween is always one of my favorite days of the year — I love seeing how creative people get with their costumes and decorations, and it’s a fun occasion to dress up! Dan and I didn’t do anything last year because I was really sick on Halloween weekend, and I was really bummed… 🙁
This year, we celebrated a day early, going to a friend’s Halloween party. Dan and I both worked on our costumes for a couple hours on Saturday afternoon before going to the party. Can you guess what we were supposed to be?
We may just look like a generic jock and cheerleader, but those who are sharp may have guessed that we were supposed to be characters from Glee! Since the show started airing, we’ve actually had several people tell us that Dan looks a lot like Finn Hudson, the star quarterback of the school and one of the central characters in the show. We’ve even had a random passerby come up to us at a restaurant to point out that they thought there was a striking resemblance. A lot of people say there’s a resemblance, some don’t see it… I can see that they have similarities in stature, the pale complexion, the pigeon chest, the general face shape, and hairstyle, but I think most of the likeness is in their facial expressions, like the face they have when they’re flustered or confused, or when they raise an eyebrow in a questioning look.
Anyway, we had enough people bring the likeness to our attention that we decided to run with it as an idea for Dan’s Halloween costume this year.
The costume was pretty easy — we took a plain red Nike jersey and stuck a huge number 5 on the front and back for Finn’s football outfit…
We stenciled and cut out white letters to spell out “HUDSON” for the back:
I have no such resemblance to any of the characters in Glee, but we decided to have some fun playing off of the pregnancy factor that I shared with Quinn Fabray, Cheerios head cheerleader and Finn’s former flame who was pregnant during most of the first season.
For the Cheerios uniform, I just ordered a simple red and white cheerleader uniform, and spent the afternoon meticulously stenciling out the letters WMHS (for William McKinley High School) onto red cloth and outlining them in white and black cloths, and gluing it onto the chest of the uniform.
Costumes complete, we headed over to our friend Joletta’s, who was hosting a Halloween party at her house.
There was lots of delicious food and we played a few fun Halloween-themed games! Afterwards, those of us who brought pumpkins gathered around to do some pumpkin-carving.
The completed pumpkins! They all came out so well!!! Can you guess which one is mine…?
I made the Totoro jack-o-lantern! 🙂 I was actually quite pleased with the result:
Dan went with his signature scary style with the carving, and created this two-faced jack-o-lantern. He carved it really fast, too; we were impressed! (He actually finished this complicated design before I completed my simple little Totoro… haha*)
Everyone at the Halloween party was dressed in such fun costumes! I really enjoyed seeing what everyone came as. :)Â Huge thanks to Joletta and Mapolo for hosting and organizing such a fun party!
Lovely Ann Helen made an adorable chef!
Lilly was the prettiest elf, and David came as a Turk! haha*
With French maid Joletta and bumblebee Christella.
We brought our pumpkins home, and I let Piper play with it since this is his first Halloween with us. Diesel was uninterested, apparently fed up from my past Halloween antics. Piper ended up biting off part of Totoro’s ear, though, so we had to repair it. 🙁
All fixed!
Today, we spent the day doing some major cleaning around the house and just prepared some candy for potential trick-or-treaters that might come by this evening. We hope everyone had a safe and fun-filled Halloween!!!
