Creed Atticus Becomes a . . .

Well, why choose one costume when you love to play dress up? This year Creed has ended up with three costumes. A really cool spider costume borrowed from a friend, the cute penguin costume, and one homemade costume - The Pigeon from Don't Let The Pigeon Drive the Bus.

I picked up the supplies for a pigeon costume before Melinda found the penguin costume for us so I decided to go ahead and make it. I really wanted Creed to wear it to the Red Butte Garden After Dark event because this year it had a storybook theme and kids were encouraged to dress up as their favorite storybook characters, but that didn't leave me with a lot of time to make it. I got the idea for the costume from a reader's costume posted on Mo Willems' blog last year. I wasn't sure if I could pull it off, and I was very nervous about it because I couldn't even get Creed to try it on ahead of time so I had no idea how it would fit, but I figured if it was terrible, it would be dark outside and I could try to fix it later.

Well, it still needs a little tweaking, but I think Creed was the cutest pigeon ever! The funny thing was that I knew some people wouldn't know exactly who he was supposed to be, but I was still surprised when a few people asked me what he was supposed to be. I mean, even if you'd never heard of the books, can't you tell that he's a bird? Would you really need to ask? Oh well, now maybe a few more people will meet Mo Willems' Pigeon and share our pigeon love.

The Randalls came along for our evening of fun. Both girls are Minnie Mouse this year (Minnie and Mini Minnie, so cute!). They love the Pigeon books too so it was fun to hear their reactions to Creed's costume.We arrived at Red Butte just in time to see a bit of it in the light and catch a beautiful sunset. We didn't bring our stroller because Creed hates riding in it, but he loves Laura and was happy to ride in her lap as much as possible even though it looked very uncomfortable.It was so nice having dads there to share cameras with because now there is evidence that Melinda and I were there too. I wasn't sure what to expect of the whole event, but it was wonderful. I thought Creed might be too young, but he had so much fun. He was so busy looking around when we arrived that we couldn't get him to look at the camera.They had great activities for little kids and Creed was so interested in everything going on. You start out with a map and you go around to the different activities in the gardens collecting stamps to win a little tree to take home. I thought we would walk around and skip most of the activities, but Creed was happy to participate. Here he is watching me put together his monkey puppet at the Curious George station. Since the theme this year was a storybook theme, all of the stations were tied to different books. Here's Fiona at the Shrek Karaoke (I was proud of them for knowing Shrek was a book first). It was so cute to watch kids Karaoke to songs like the alphabet and songs from High School Musical. Some Wizard of Oz Scarecrows protecting the garden
A Doctor Seuss beanbag game
An Alice in Wonderland Maze (that was big enough to easily accommodate a double stroller)So many Halloween happenings are too scary for little ones so it was really fun to be at a big Halloween event designed for little kids. The gardens were beautiful and there were fun details everywhere you looked. They even had big spotlights up on the surrounding mountains to cast big Halloween shadows. I think we all had a lot of fun.I have to include this picture from Larry's phone because when we got home and I was peeling off all of Creed's layers, I discovered he wore this necklace all evening and wasn't ready to take it off and it made me giggle.I guess all that fun wore Larry out most of all!