My $2 Homemade Thomas the Train Costume

Teddy loves Thomas the Train. I love making costumes. Halloween was approaching. We had a bunch of recycling piling up. It all came together for a perfect storm.

My materials:

1 diaper box
1 box of milk cartons three-pack, cut in half
1 empty tub of Greek yogurt
1 empty tub of broccoli cheddar soup (same size as yogurt tub)
3 dessert-size paper plates
1 dinner-size paper plate
strips of cardboard
4 feet-ish of thick ribbon
1 can blue spray paint
1 can black spray paint
red acrylic paint
yellow acrylic paint
black sharpie
hot glue gun
scissors
picture of Thomas or Thomas toy to look at

The only things I had to buy were the blue spray paint and the ribbon because I wanted ribbon cuter than what I had, It totaled roughly $2, and that's rounding up.

The funnest part about the costume was that I made the funnel be the place where the candy goes. That way he didn't need to carry a bucket or bag for candy. Here's what I did. Maybe it will be helpful to someone out there who likes to throw cheap stuff together for costumes. :)

Started cutting a diaper box

Found this in the recycling

Cut a hole in a box flap and hot glued the container to it-- a spot
for candy!

Later I cut a trap door into this so the candy could be taken out easier.

So the top looked like this and I cut the hole at the bottom a little bigger
for his feet to walk.

Attached the other box-half with hot glue and spray painted it all blue

Spray painted the next container black for the funnel, and glued it around the hole

Cut slits and glued the ribbon down

Painted red lines and let Cal help attach spray-painted paper plates 

I had also spray painted these blue cardboard strips and then
glued them on top of the wheels

Painted my yellow "1" on the sides, drew a face on a trimmed dinner plate with
a sharpie, and BAM. Thomas.

Teddy approved

And so did his Wizard-Brothers

Teddy, Teddy Two Two

Teddy turned two a couple weeks ago. I was dreaming up a little birthday party with lots of trains, cars, trucks, and tractors... but I didn't pull that off, despite putting together a killer Pinterest board. Next year?

His birthday is July 5th and we were at the lake over his birthday. We were lucky to have his best friend and cousin, little Clara there to celebrate. The two had a wonderful time together all weekend in the water and out of the water. I made the easiest birthday cake I've ever made and we sang to him several times. He loves the happy birthday song and kept wanting it over and over. The cake was chocolate, with chocolate frosting and crushed up Oreos. (Cal and Clark loved crushing the Oreos.) I stuck some toy construction equipment on it and BAM! Construction Site cake. He loved it, but not as much as Clara loved it. For some reason he's not keen on getting his hands dirty, but Clara loves to.

Here is a list of  some of our favorite Teddy-words.

Our Favorite Teddy -isms: 

Happ-ER-dee (Happy Birthday)

BAH-gidge (garbage truck)

GAH-gee (doggie)

CUH-k (Clark)

Daddy

Mommy

Biggy (Gammy)

Bugga (Grandma)

Poppy

Papa

AH-duh, AH-duh (all done)

bases (while running in circles)

Bah-bah-BAH (bottle)

WAH-chis (watch this)

BUG uh zur (bulldozer)

Toss (Thomas the train) 

Em ee LEE (Emily the engine)

WOO WOO (ambulance and/or fire truck) 

UH cuh cur (excavator) 

AH-guh NEW-ooz (all gone noodles) 

HEP-eeze (help please)

HUD (hug)

DEN tuhl (gentle)

Why why wess (Wild, Wild West) 

E-I-E-I-O (anytime there's a barn or farm animals or hay bales, etc)

Ta-da! The birthday boy

Dirt pile cake

Model lips

Eating with construction equipment

Sure Mom, I'll just sit here and look at the water...

I'll get a LITTLE closer...

Yeah, this is better.

Kayak get-away

5th of July boy

Beach bums

What a blessing little Theodore John is! I can't imagine life without him.

Balcony, Baseball, and My Best Boys

I interrupt this blog drought.

Main reason: I've had pneumonia for six days. After a couple days of increasingly worse chest and back pain, and a fever, I went to the emergency room at 3 AM on Friday. They ruled out heart problems with and EKG, took a blood test that showed I might have a blot clot in my lung, and did a CT scan that showed I had pneumonia. I don't know how I could have gotten it. I've had no congestion or cold or anything. Turns out pneumonia is incredibly painful and draining. Brian was predictably awesome about taking care of the boys and taking them out so I could rest. I'm still only able to walk around for a little while at a time without feeling winded.

This morning when I woke up I suddenly had an idea: a good way to spend some winded time would be writing a blog entry. Then I rolled over and saw a hockey goalie helmet on my bed, which wasn't as weird to me as it should have been. Neither was the distant, raspy sound of the Darth Vader helmet telling me my powers were weak. I don't know the power of the Dark Side, it told me.

The boys had gotten up before me and, using a broom, gotten Cheerios down from the top shelf in the pantry and made themselves breakfast. Fortunately I spotted the lidless carton of milk without its lid on it by the edge of the table before the boys knocked it over and learned the power of my dark side.

It's a lovely morning and Teddy and I had a nice time watering balcony plants and then he drove his stuffed animals to Gammy's house:

Then we made a bubble bath in the cooler, which consumed the better part of an hour:

Just add blue food coloring...

We smelled the flowers and herbs.

We watched for buses and garbage trucks. ("BAH-good-j trucks" Teddy says.) And saw a loud fire engine. A bee prompted some Teddy-Mommy snuggling.

And Teddy got a dry shirt and snack.

Even though breathing in deeply isn't something I can do, it's been a lovely morning.

While I'm at it, here are some pictures from our Reston Little League end-of-the-season picnic yesterday. Brian was awarded the Coach-of-the-Year award for the second year in a row! I'm proud of him for all his work and I love to watch him with the kids, who adore him. They've all improved and his coaching has somehow become even more creative and fun to watch.

Marlins Rookie Ball representatives: Andrew in the Fastest Runner competition, Clark, Arlo, Charlie, Shan (not pictured) All-Star game players, and Calvin in the Farthest Thrower competition. What a great season we've had!

Cousins discovering Italian Ice

...in their baseball gear

Blue ice tongue

Running off the Italian ice

National League Rookie Ball All-Stars

The Pledge

Players introduced

Watching Big Brother Clark the Shark in the batter's box

Okay, I've caught my breath sufficiently. Blog drought reinstated...but hopefully it won't take pneumonia to prompt me to put together another entry.

Snow Daze

We've had a lot of snow/ice/cold days this winter, just like last year. Here it is, March 5th, and it's another snow day. I think I can speak for everyone in the Northern Virginia/ DC area when I say we are over the snow and ready for spring. I'm sick of dressing up the boys to go out into the snow and cleaning up all their saturated snow clothes, so today I brought snow in to them. We made a snow scene and volcanoes in a plastic bin in the living room. There were shrieks of laughter as the boys delighted in the utter destruction of their dinosaurs and other little toys...which kind of bothers me, but I think it's a boy thing. Here are pictures.

Clark puts baking soda in cups and bottles.

Burying the cups in the snow

Setting the scene with dinosaurs, astronauts, Spiderman, tropical fish, etc.

The scene-setting lasted for around 45 minutes as there were
numerous attacks, avalanches, fights...

astronauts snowboarding down mountains...

Mountain reconstruction

A dinosaur sneaking up on a snowboarding astronaut

Explorers too near the mouth of the volcano

Fish in a pond

As vinegar is poured into the food coloring and baking soda,
explorers are overcome by bubbling lava!

Destruction is everywhere!

No one can escape.

Some are completely buried alive.

Subsequent eruptions abounded.

Tragedy was widespread.

Explosions caused avalanches that resulted in more casualties.

As the dust settled...

More eruptions began!

After cleaning up the pieces they mixed the colors in the snow.

And T-bird helped clean up the little toys in a bucket of fresh snow.