Fertile Gnomes...

Friday was our Halloween festivities at our school. The children look forward to the Halloween parade and each class has a class party full of games, crafts and festivities. This year our family dressed up as garden gnomes. Of course our boys were not content with being your average every day garden gnome variety they had to infuse some super hero elements into their characters to make them more desirable. On our way to school this is what I heard as they discussed their gnome status..."when I rub my magic mushroom (appliqued on their vests) I can command lava!"..."when I rub my mushroom I can command the sky!"...Well, you get the picture.
Then the boys decided that they each needed to have "gnome names" and they had to be cool. G-man said "I'm going to be Digger, cause I love to dig!". Seichi proclaimed that he was going to be called "Shroom" after mu-shroom. S-dog exclaimed "I love lightning!" so we decided his name would be "Zinger". Then Biel chimed in "I'll be called Fertile!" My head spun around to look at him and maintain the car safely on the road at the same time...so shocked by his statement was I. I tried to maintain my cool by calmly asking "really honey why is that?" He replied "you know Fertile is short for fertilizer, get it?" I retorted "it's also short for fertility which means that you can make a lot of babies". His eyes grew wide as he replied "Oh no, I certainly don't want to be doing that!" We laughed so hard, it felt almost healing to share that kind of a belly laugh with my child and create a fun inside joke. Then we focused our efforts on coming up with a cool gnome name for him, finally settling on "Oakey" as in oak tree. We thought it to be a solid, respectable, masculine gnome name. After we finished Biel piped up "wow that certainly took a long time just to come up with one gnome name for me, imagine if I had to come up with a name for each of the gnome babies I would have had!" We laughed even harder. What a funny dude!

This morning we went to a "trunk or treat" with all our friends from church, the boys had so much fun going from car to car collecting treats and visiting with their friends. Afterwards on our way home I whined about how empty our fridge was and how I really didn't want to go grocery shopping. Handsome hubby suggested we all go to Costco together as a family in our gnome costumes. I NEVER thought I would hear my husband make that sort of suggestion. He even wore HIS costume! We went to Costco and boy did heads turn and a lot of smiles. I couldn't help feel that we were cheering up some people's day with our crazy antics. We had many comments too..."nice costumes I love your elf costumes!"...actually we are garden gnomes. "I love your smurf costumes"...actually we are garden gnomes. "I love your Santa costumes"...actually we are garden gnomes. "I love your seven dwarf costumes"....PEOPLE WE ARE GARDEN GNOMES!!!!  All in all it was a lot of fun!