Halloween Ideas with Seven Kids

I know that Halloween is approaching. This could be because I can read a calendar, have been in Home Depot and seen their over-the-top displays, or because there are pumpkins in all the advertisements. But the real reason I know is because my kids have been talking about it about for three months so we must finally be getting close.

Having seven kids presents a unique opportunity to coordinate a clever or fun family theme for a costume. Well, it would if that’s the sort of thing I did. Which it’s not.

But I do think it’s fun to come up with ideas of what they could have been. How are these for some ideas?

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Ok, so we have one girl and six boys instead of seven dwarves… I guess I could be Grumpy.

A basketball team.  To make this work I’m thinking the five oldest boys would be players, boy number six would be the referee, and baby girl would be the basketball. We’d have to make it clear that their little sister should not actually be dunked in a basketball goal.

Security detail for famous person. Our daughter could be a pop star or something and she’d have six “men in black” with sunglasses flanking her as she parades around the neighborhood demanding candy. We already have the little sister protection squad security t-shirts for all the boys.

M&Ms. There are six colors amongst the M&Ms in a bag but there are actually seven different colors amongst the M&M spokescandies. This was news to me but as I was doing extensive research for this column I learned so much more. For one, there is such a thing as a spokescandy, and also there’s all sorts of controversy regarding the M&M colors, and finally that you should never underestimate the absurd level of character development in a marketing campaign! Anyway, we have the perfect number of kids to pull off an M&M costume for every color so chalk this up as a missed opportunity.

Power rangers. We could definitely have pulled this one off given the number of uniform variations in the last 33 years of Power Rangers.

Noble gasses. Ok, there’s just so much opportunity here. Admittedly, having my daughter listed as one of the seven gasses with her brothers isn’t great…but I know she could handle it. The symbols for the noble gasses on the periodic table are: He, Ne, Ar, Kr, Xe, Rn, and Og. All it would take to pull this costume off is a white t-shirt with their symbol on it. Least expensive family costume ever.

The Planets. This one comes with a very funny but borderline inappropriate built-in prank. Since our solar system apparently only has eight planets now (I still count you, Pluto) we would appear to be one planet short with the seven kids. However, that’s the punchline of this joke. The kids would dress up in costumes as Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. This, of course, would result in an inquiry at every trick-or-treat stop as to where the missing planet was… As all the planets spun around to show their derrieres it would truly put the trick in trick-or-treat.