Ferdinand and the Bee: Our Halloween 2018

Ferdinand and the Bee: Our Halloween 2018

Are you familiar with The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf? It’s a cute children’s book written in the ’30s that was the inspiration for the animated Ferdinand movie. In the story, Ferdinand is a bull who just wants to smell the flowers and isn’t interested in fighting like all the other bulls. One day some men come to choose the biggest and fiercest bull to take to the bull fights in Madrid. Ferdinand, of course, is not interested, so he goes to sit under his favorite tree, but ends up sitting on a BEE! After getting stung, he ends up looking like the biggest, baddest, meanest bull of all… You have to check out the story to see how it ends!

Way back at the beginning of September we got a Hanna Andersson catalog in the mail, full of ideas for Halloween costumes using their cute pajamas. I showed it to Joey to see if any costumes looked fun to her, thinking she’d choose a flamingo or a ballerina, but immediately, after one glance, she said she wanted to be a bee. A bee? Really? Ok, we figured there’s no way a 2.5 year old would stick with it for pretty much two whole months… But every single day she would say she wanted to be a bee. We bought her the pjs just to make sure they didn’t go out of stock before Halloween, but kept them packed up with the receipt just in case!

We had no idea what to do for Olly’s costume if Joey was a bee. It’s fun to have them coordinate somehow, so we actually bought him bee pjs too, thinking it would be an easy default. Then just a week ago I was reading Ferdinand to the kids and suddenly went ohhh! He could be Ferdinand and she could be the bee who stings him!! How adorable.

We did trick or treating during the day at Andy’s office. There are about 200 employees, and it’s really cute for the little kids to walk around — out of the cold and rain. And the kids got SO MUCH candy. It was also fun to have lunch with dad in the middle of the week!

Then in the evening Joey went trick or treating for real for the very first time. It was raining and cold, but she had the best time going to about four or five neighbors’ houses and then helping to pass out candy at home.

It was such a fun day and I loved their costumes. Ferdinand is not a story that a ton of people are familiar with (I wasn’t, before we received the book as a gift for Olly’s birthday!), but I think it’s adorable and worked well both as a pair and separately. Now… what should they be next year?! One of these years I want to do a whole family costume.