Pumpkins

It’s been a busy month in our house with Phil studying and taking yet another board exam (felt like old times when he’d have to work all day and then come home to study all night. Ugh, bad memories) in addition to all the other regular activities going on.  So we just couldn’t fit in a trip to the pumpkin patch this year.  Boo.

But!  I seized the day right after Phil’s test and designated it pumpkin carving day.  So I sent him and the kids off to the market to pick up pumpkins and whatever else he deemed necessary to tackle the task at hand.

All set up and ready to do this thing.

The girls had fun playing with the pumpkin guts.

She was living up the squishy grossness.  Eventually shed her gloves so that she could squish with her bare hands.

But this is what this guy thought of pumpkin guts.  He still remembers the year I made them taste the lid of the pumpkin which totally grossed him out.  It’s burned into his memory.

Being the awesome-face-your-fears-head-on type of parents we are, we of course made him reach right in there…

and get those pumpkin guts outta there.

Nope, not a fan.

And yes, he’s been wearing this shirt for three years.  He refuses to let me retire it.

Got my pumpkin carved and ready to go.

He wanted to keep things simple with the pumpkin carving this year.  This was Jonah’s pumpkin.  He didn’t have much input on it as he was busy napping away while all this was going on.  Some day he’ll be awake to join us…

I couldn’t resist printing out a few templates for the kids to use though.

And it seemed easy enough.  At first.

Although my pumpkin was finished awhile ago, I somehow got roped into “helping” Lauren with her pumpkin.

Finished!

She did most of it herself and did an awesome job.

He worked really hard on his, too.  So proud of him for sticking with it even though it proved to be harder than it looked at first.

The whole pumpkin family.

All lit up inside.

So um, my seizing of the day was a tad premature.  As in, we did it ten days ago and uh, they didn’t quite make it til the big day.  As in, I looked at them yesterday and one was completely black with mold inside and was oozing pumpkin juice everywhere.  Yuck.  And the others weren’t looking too hot either.

One of these years I will remember this.

And the kids wanted to enter a pumpkin into their school contest tomorrow, but none of the above were salvageable, so this is what they and their daddy did tonight:

Happy last day of October, however you choose to celebrate it!  🙂