My wife made the dress/apron and cape/hood for our oldest daughter when she was younger (she turns 9 today, Sep 19th) for Halloween. Then my youngest daughter (she's 6.5 right now) inherited it when she was the right age/size. Here are some pics I found making the connection that this costume was shared and handed down. I love anything that connects my children to our dogs!

Kaulini with Paw Paw. This was our beautiful forested backyard in Portland, Oregon that backed up to acres and acres of more forest, filled with coyote packs and deer, up on Mount Scott facing north towards Mount Saint Helens and Mount Rainier:



I searched my wife's flickr account and could only find the following pics in small sizes. Not sure why the larger version was not available, but this is all I've got while in Korea, and is better than nothing. Oh well! Ha. My wife is sure to have the large hi-res file at home in Idaho.







Here is younger sister Ciara (and future Little Red Riding Hood) as a monkey for Halloween. Our son, Lucian, now wears the monkey costume, and even he has started to outgrow it at 3.5 years old (he'll be 4 in Feb 2015). I don't remember where we were at with the goats and other farm animals, but this was a few hours prior to trick or treating:



This is a scene on our nature table depicting Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf. We've had these wooden German-imported Ostheimer toys for about 8 years, and when we bought the wolf, I named it Beowulf after my favorite childhood story. Later, when we rescued a wolfdog, I named him Beowulf after this wooden wolf below:



Ciara as LRRH with her hand-me-down costume and Beowulf as her wolf:





And some other random pics I just found of my kids that I thought were cute enough to share. Here's Kaulini and Ciara pre-LRRH, our first year in Oregon fall 2009 at Harvest Festival at the Portland Waldorf School:



Friends 'til the end!



Our Ostheimer version of Paw Paw:



And our Ostheimer version of Nara (or Kaze). Gotta include a GSD to represent our 2, right!?!



SAVE OUR SOULS from the Big Bad Wolves. Our cats living together short term in the hotel during our move one state over, from Oregon to Idaho. They look so happy, don't they! That big black blob is Midnight, our only male. Simpkin is the black and white kitten behind him. 4 cats visible. I think Arctica (all-white) is hidden in the back, or maybe we separated her, as she doesn't get along nicely with the other cats because they gang up on and bully her. We call her Space Kitty. But here, from left to right, is Geisha our feral rescue, Bhakti, Midnight, and Simpkin:

Very cute! We did this with koda and my niece last year. Such a great idea! Love the one with beowulfs mouth open

Ericobeasto wrote:

Very cute! We did this with koda and my niece last year. Such a great idea! Love the one with beowulfs mouth open

Thank you! You'd yawn too if you had a 3rd generation monkey on your back. Hehe. If you look closely, you might catch a glimpse of that rascal Lucian Monkey!

Lucian Monkey and friends the Bride and LRRH:







Ciara Monkey:



And Kaulini Monkey:

Ericobeasto wrote:

Love the one with beowulfs mouth open

I've been told that wolves and dogs will yawn to calm themselves, which is what Beowulf is actually doing in that pic, as he might not be as comfortable with all of the attention. He was a rescue who was abused, beaten and starved at 14 weeks old when we got him. He has made huge steps forward, leaps and bounds beyond what I expected of him, and he has done great with our children. Here are some other pics I found of him calming himself around the kiddos while being fitted in his new Alpine Outfitters custom X-back harness:

Love the pictures. They tell such a fun story.

And definitely a beautiful backyard to use for that theme.

Great images!

Really nice! I like to see a family "doing".

This is so neat! You have a very nice background for it too!!!

Danzig's Mommy wrote:

This is so neat!  You have a very nice background for it too!!!

Had...had a nice background for it. Those big beautiful trees were in Portland, Oregon. Now we live in the high desert plain of Idaho, in a valley between 2 large mountain ranges. The only trees we have were planted by the residents, or are thriving up in the higher portions of the mountains. We miss our trees.

This is the biggest tree in our immediate backyard...so puny and small:



And this is our treeless Idaho terrain beyond the fence:



At least the golf course behind our yard offers a pond and nice scenery:



Gonna be a lady killa when he's older:

Wow - Idaho is a bit...barren! Still, the pics are lovely.

You must be on the other side of the world? Or just don't sleep at night? I'm sick at the moment and sleep is tenuous at best.

Now that I think, you mentioned Korea? Last I knew you were in Hawaii?

You must miss your family - at least there's skype type things these days...

In searching for specific pics on our family blog, I came across an oldie but goodie: THE ORIGINAL PIC THAT STARTED IT ALL! This was the first time we saw Little Red Riding Hood come out (however unintentional) in relation to child and dog, which is what led to all of the other pics, costumes, etc. posted above. This one pic was the inspiration and the seed planted to sprout new life and thoughts into this idea. So glad I found it. I almost forgot all about it.

amymeme wrote:

Wow - Idaho is a bit...barren!  Still, the pics are lovely.

You must be on the other side of the world? Or just don't sleep at night?  I'm sick at the moment and sleep is tenuous at best.

Now that I think, you mentioned Korea?  Last I knew you were in Hawaii?

You must miss your family - at least there's skype type things these days...

Sorry I missed this. I usually go off the right side bar for new messages, and maybe my thread got bumped off before I realized I had another reply. I didn't mean to ignore you.

But yeah, compared to all of the trees in Western Oregon, Idaho looks like Eastern Oregon: DESOLATE AND BARREN! Haha. It has been a strange but beautiful transition for us to go through. We get a lot more snow here, and have different bird species (we miss our Stellar's Jays but love our new Magpies, and still get our wacky bird the Killdeer), and there are trees if you drive far enough up into the mountains. We live in a high plains desert with 2 mountain ranges, 1 on either side of us. People warned us that, just like you embrace and love the green of Oregon, once in Idaho, we will embrace and eventually love the brown.

And right again, I'm in Korea for my final week after being gone from home for 4 long months. I can't wait to get back to my wife, kids and pups and cats next week!! This is the longest I've been away from them since I've known them. It is very difficult to be away and missing out.