Beware of Dinosaurs

Miss V wanted to be Queen Elsa. OK. Fortunately, Zak decided he'd be willing to dress as John Hammond from Jurassic Park. I can work with that. Rather than wearing short shorts and tank top with a light blouse in October as Dr Ellie Sadler, I chose to go as Dr Alan Grant. I found a fitting dress for Miss V in China. Done. I looked online for a dinosaur hoodie which Mr C could wear more than one night. I found a perfect one from Target, and then realized it was discontinued. The kids and I hit up the local Deseret Industries thrift store for my stuff and to look for any dinosaur ideas. I found a faded patterned hoodie, which could have worked, but wasn't great. I thought again, and considered the fact that his favorite word to say repeatedly is "Truck!" Scratch the dino idea, let's make a Jeep costume! I wanted it to be like the Jurassic Park Jeeps in the first film of the franchise, so I looked online and found some movie stills. It looked manageable for a custom sewing job. I'm not a talented experienced seamstress, which a close look at any of my sewing projects will attest, but I've done enough clothing repairs and adjustments for my family in the last seven years to pick up a few skills.

I drew a preliminary sketch, which the kids colored, so I drew a secondary sketch, and searched for materials. For the main body and bumper I found Walmart sweatshirts, and bought fat quarters for most of the other stuff. Huzzah for Jurassic Park patches on eBay, because there's no way I could have managed without those. JoAnn finished off the rest of my supplies (along with Mom, who had a bunch of thread I used). Thanks to my parents and sister, Trena, who took care of my kiddos while I ignored them for countless hours to sew. Recommendation for future projects: use paracord instead of yarn for the winch cable, so it doesn't fray in the washer.

We got to wear our costumes four times this Halloween: my parent' church carnival, our church's fall festival, actual Halloween, and the Family Center's preschool party. Zak and I didn't want to spend $30-200 dollars on an ambered mosquito, so he got a Gerber baby container filled with orange hand soap, and added a rubber fly we found at the dollar store. D.I. did have a bamboo stick, so he hot-glued it all together, but partway into our party, the glue pulled the paint off the Gerber lid, so his main prop lost its focal point. I admit, he did quite well growing a beard to dye for the occasion. He insisted that Miss V's costume did fit with the family theme, because "she's the one who made the dinosaurs go extinct."

After the first two parties, it felt like Halloween was done (about before actual Halloween), but thankfully the kids' and my costumes are easy to wear, and I only had to wash them once to get soup off the queen's and Jeep's attire. Because of Zak's perfect hat that I borrowed, I did get called Indiana Jones once or twice, but the theme worked best at the trunk-or-treat on Halloween where I had black cheesecloth, a camo blanket, cardboard sign reading "Beware of Velociraptors," some dollar store dinosaurs, and Zak's phone playing John Williams' brilliant theme music.