He's Lightning McQueen!

The last day of the school term is Character Parade Day at Noey's school. What is that, you ask? It's a day where the children are to go to school dressed in a costume of their favourite storybook character, and the costume has to be made out of recycled materials.

I would have just thrown something together and called it a day, except that I'd seen photos of the previous edition of the Character Parade held last year and realised that parents really do make the effort for this day. And since I'm home full-time, I have no excuse of being too busy at work to make a costume for Noey, right?

I asked Noey what he'd like to dress up as. "The Very Busy Spider," was his reply. Ugh. I spent a few days thinking about how to execute a spider costume that he would condescend to wear (and not reject at the last minute and waste all my effort), before I gave up. After some brainstorming with DD, we decided Noey would be Lightning McQueen. I was particularly pleased that I would be able to use a can of spray paint that I had bought for Naomi's birthday pinata and not used. It wouldn't be recycling per se, but I thought the minimization of wastage was in the same spirit.

Of course, Noey wasn't too pleased that he was not getting his spider. And even after he accepted that it would be a car, he insisted it should be blue. I decided that it was best that I ignore him.

I made poor DD lug a cardboard box back from the office, on public transport, no less. He did most of the constructing while I did the taping, painting and colouring. Noey wanted to help so I set him to work colouring the wheels. But after colouring half a hubcap, he started complaining that it was too big and there was too much to colour. So Mummy here had to take over the task. DD also put on the finishing touches when I was too tired and crashed out while putting Noey to sleep. Which was very sweet of him, considering he had arrived home close to midnight that night after a long day at work. Unfortunately for him, when he had come into the room some time in the middle of the night after I had woken up, and showed me his handiwork -- completing Lightning Mcqueen's eyes, sticking on the wheels, and drawing and pasting lightning bolts at the side of the car, my first comment was: "Where's the 95?" Poor guy has such an ungrateful and fussy wife!

Anyway, at the end of the day, this is what we sent Noey off to school in:

And whaddya know? He won a 2nd place button!

It was a joint 2nd place with like 3-4 others in his level. There were many interesting and creative costumes, and the school clearly wanted to reward the effort put in by the parents for the event. There were a bunch of joint 1st places as well! It was reward for me just seeing the happy smile on my son's face.

By the way, if you think it's hard work putting together one costume, you have to check this out: The Avengers, by a Mum with triplet boys and another younger son. Aren't they just the coolest?

Yes, the parents made FOUR costumes.

(Last year, the triplets were the Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 and Thing 2.)

And with that, the school term is over! Now the ball is in my court to keep the kids occupied through the June hols...