The Trick to Having a Happy Halloween...

...is to paint a smile on your face.


But beware! If your wife wears an x-ray shirt, revealing that your baby is proportioned like a monkey...


...it might make you cry. And if you cry, your makeup will run.


I hope you have a non-traumatic Halloween!

I can bake, too

Help! There's a Vampire in My Kitchen!

Never mind, it's okay. He's one of those sexy vampires, like in Twilight. I'll keep him.

Costumes, Candy, and Poop

S-Boogie wore her costume all day. Me too. I was the only one in my metadata class this morning wearing a costume, but that just shows how much cooler I am than everyone else (last year a classmate dressed up as the FRBR model, which I thought was one of the coolest costumes ever). After class I headed over to S-Boogie's preschool to help with pumpkin carving and trick-or-treating. It was a lot of fun to see all the kids' costumes and to see how excited they were to get candy. The school gave parents the option to have our kid's treat bag swapped for a healthy treat bag after the trick-or-treating, and FoxyJ and I decided to take that option since S-Boogie already had a bunch of candy from trunk-or-treating on Saturday and we knew she'd get more tonight. She was suprisingly cool with this, very excited when she got home to eat her bag of "special treats"--fruit leather, apple sauce, carrots, and juice.

After school and snacks, S-Boogie and I went to the comic shop to pick up my comics for this week. I figured that if anyone would appreciate our homemade Supergirl and Bruce Wayne costumes, it would be comic shop people, but no one said anything. I figure it's because they were amazed to the point of speechlessness.

This morning I had wondered if it was a good idea to dress Little Dude in the red turtleneck onesie he needed for his Robin costume this afternoon, but I figured it would be fine. When I got home from the comic shop and opened his bedroom door to find him sitting pantsless in his crib, licking poop off his fingers, I realized that I should have listened to that still small voice of Halloweeny wisdom. FoxyJ gathered up the dirty clothes and bedding and threw it in the washer while I cleaned off the child, then on her way out the door suggested I use LD's red coat for his costume, since it was cold outside and the turtleneck onesie was no longer an option. A poopy disaster turned into a blessing, as the red coat ended up looking even better than the onesie (under the coat he's wearing a red short-sleeve onesie with some car design printed on the front; if I'd had a green onesie under the coat it would have been perfect):


So S-Boogie, LD, and I went trick-or-treating at the shopping center that doubles as our backyard while FoxyJ headed off to teach her class. My only complaint with that experience, besides the crowd, is that everyone was giving out lollipops and Smarties. Where's the chocolate, folks?

The best part of the day, I have to say, came at the end: after sloppy joes and tater tots for dinner, then a quick bath (eliminating the final remnants of poopiness), we turned off the lights, put The Batman vs. Dracula in the DVD player, and ate as much candy as our stomachs could handle. I'm all for encouraging kids to eat healthily, but c'mon, it's Halloween! That's the point! And in my defense as a responsible parent, LD went to bed halfway through the movie and after only one package of Smarties and one lollipop. One-and-a-half-year-olds don't get to decide how much candy their stomachs can handle.

S-Boogie went to bed just a little late, a few minutes after FoxyJ got home from work, and then I lay down in bed and read my comics. The perfect end to a perfect holiday.

Mr. Fob, Costume Designer

As you can imagine, it makes me quite the proud father to hear my four-year-old daughter tell me she wants to be Supergirl for Halloween. We actually made the cape and shield for Halloween two years ago, when the costume was more my idea than hers, but this time we managed to get a more traditional Supergirl look with a blue shirt from the Gap and a red holiday skirt from Children's Place. We probably could have tracked down red boots instead of getting another pair of sparkly red Target shoes, as rain boots are much easier to find in Seattle than in Orem, but she already has a pair of rain boots so we decided the sparkly shoes were not only cheaper but more practical.


Little Dude's Robin costume, which I admit was more my idea than his, is not quite so true to the source material, but Robin's costume has varied so much over the years that I felt justified in going with a more liberal interpretation that takes elements from all of them. We tried to find green tights, but ended up settling for black, which made everyone think he was one of the Incredibles. Oh well. I think he makes a pretty good Robin.

My costume is a variation of the costume I've used almost every year for the last five or six years--in the past I've been Clark Kent, so this year I decided to be Bruce Wayne. It gave me an excuse to buy a really cool Bat-symbol t-shirt, and like the Clark Kent costume it has the advantage of being a little subtler than a full-on superhero costume. A touch I added this year--a clever touch, if I do say so myself--is the cape hanging out the back of Bruce Wayne's shirt. No one ever gets it, to be honest; they tend to think I'm just too embarrassed to take off my normal clothes and show off my costume, or they don't notice it at all. That's okay, though. I like it.

Attack of the Killer Spores

After we finished carving our Jack-o'-Lantern on Thursday, I put him out on the front porch for Fob to enjoy as they arrived. Later that night, though, after everyone left, I decided to bring Jack back inside with the thought that I would put him out on the back porch, where he would be enjoyed by more passersby (as it happens, we get a lot of passers passing by our back porch). Except instead of putting him outside at the time, I set him inside next to the back door, thinking I'd put him out on Friday morning.

This morning I took a look at Jack, still sitting in the same spot I put him on Thursday night--in our heated apartment--and noticed there seemed to be cobwebs in his eyes. "Oh, how very Halloweeny of you, Jack," I said. "Is there a spider living in you already?" And then I looked closer and realized, of course, that it was mold. Which is also Halloweeny, I guess, but in a gross sort of way.

Moral of the story: pumpkins, like kids, should be kept outside.

Sneak Preview

Viewers of Fox 13 News in Salt Lake City won't see the creation of the Fob Family Jack o' Lantern 2006 for a while (we don't know when yet), but you, my dear blog readers, can see the finished product right here.

And the scary nighttime shot:

Boo! (Sorry if I scared you.)

Oh, and the interview went well, I think.

Happy Halloween

Not bad for my first pumpkin, eh? For some reason, stabbing a sharp knife into someone's face came naturally to me. Hm.



Just one more reason for you to come to the party, of course.

Halloween Preview

OR, watch the movie.