Hi everyone! I’m Kristen – many of you know me as our Board President, but I am also mom to Kylan, who is in the 4s class, and Talia, who will be in the 2s class next year. My husband/their dad is Torrey.
With Halloween coming up soon, we’d like to share our Browne family tradition with you – every year we do family themedHalloween costumes! We know we aren’t the only family in town that dresses up in costumes for Halloween, but we like to think of our costumes as an extension of our nerdy family flavor. Before the children were born, Torrey and I enjoyed attending conventions for board games, card games, computer games, video games – what can I say? We love to play games!Occasionally, we would even cosplay (that’s a fancy way of saying “dress up in costume”) at the conventions as some of our favorite fictional characters, including Agent Peggy Carter (Captain America/Agent Carter), Captain Malcom Reynolds(Firefly), and Leela and Fry (Futurama). We aren’t professionals, by any means, but we have lots of fun!
For Kylan’s first Halloween, we were some of The Guardians of the Galaxy! Kylan attended his first board game convention cosplaying as Baby Groot (hat knitted by me, romper sewn by Torrey) with a Starlord dad and a Rocket Raccoon mom before he turned one. The next year, we dressed up as Disney’s Lilo, Stitch, and Social Worker Cobra Bubbles. That year, it rained a ton on Halloween, so we had to work our rain boots into the costumes too!
Once Kylan started school at WLCN, we let him start to choose the themes for our costumes. When he was in the 2s class,Kylan chose dressing up as characters from his favorite book/tv series, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. He was Mouse (of course!), I was the (pregnant with little sister) Chocolate Chip Cookie, and Torrey was Mouse’s best human friend, Oliver. Last year, we didn’t let the pandemic slow us down! Kylan’s favorite source of daily sing-a-longs was none other than Frozen. He was an ecstatic Olaf, dad was Kristoff, mom was Anna, and his rookie cosplayer little sister joined tradition with us for the first time as Elsa.
This year is our first year where we are splitting into two smaller themes instead of one big family theme, mostly because we just couldn’t make up our minds! Talia and I will reuse the costumes of Lilo and Stitch, while Torrey and Kylan will dress as another classic pair – Linus (Torrey) and the Great Pumpkin (Kylan) from Peanuts!
As the world slowly starts to open back up and we start to venture out again, we plan to continue our tradition of themed family costumes for Halloween for as long as the children want to participate, allowing their interests to dictate what we ultimately choose each year. Oh, and the dressing up doesn’t end with Halloween and game conventions. You can also catch us cosplaying for the occasional trip back in time to the Renaissance Festival or for a weekend pirate treasure hunt throughColumbia, too (if you haven’t gone on a local pirate treasure hunt yet, check out HoCo Pirate Adventures – we highly recommend them)!
We can’t wait to see what everyone else has planned for Halloween costumes this year! Wear your masks, be safe, and dress up!
