Carving Jack-o-Lanterns

Roughly 6 years ago Trevor and I had a pumpkin carving contest. He won. Maybe because he won by carving "will you marry me?" into the pumpkin, or maybe because I said yes. Take your pick. I already enjoyed the tradition of carving pumpkins, but this just made me hold it a little more dear to my heart. Trevor probably never should have asked me to marry him that way because he doesn't particularly like to carve pumpkins, but I make him each year.

Truthfully its not like I have to drag Trev kicking and screaming to carve pumpkins, but I am met with some resistance, and a little grumbling each time. Although we didn't buy pumpkins until 3 days before Halloween, and everytime I mentioned needing to get some, Trevor really didn't complain any more than just a little eye rolling.

I would definitely say we had more fun making our jack-o-lanterns than any before. Brody of course got into it. He made the choices for what mom should draw as our 'pattern' on his and Ry's pumpkins. For Ryder, this was the time of his life. Last year he was so little that he just sat in his bumbo on top of the table and watched, but this year he got to get down and dirty in all the pumpkin guts. And boy did he!

When Brody was this age (and even now) he really didn't want anything to do with the guts. He liked taking the tools and poking them into the skin of the pumpkin and he would scoop out some guts, but touching them? Heck no. Too gross.

Ryder thought the guts were the best part. Evertime we threw some into the big bowl on the floor he would use the scoop to pull them back out. He even took it upon himself to taste test the pumpkin. More than once. More times than we could count really.

We stripped down the boys to just their jammie pants but quickly realized that was a mistake. We should have just had them naked. Especially Ry. He was covered. We were smart enough to just sit on the kitchen floor and the mess was easily mopped up afterwards, but my gosh....it was SUCH a mess! It got so bad that Ryder would nearly do the splits everytime he tried to stand up. So nasty!
When everything was all said and done, we all had a great time. The pumpkins were not perfect, definitely done by ameteurs, but cute anyway. Trevor's pumpkin said Trick or Treat (for like the 3rd year in a row), I called mine a Dracu-lantern, Brody had said he wanted his to "have eyes wike me, and a mouf wike me, and a nose wike me..." so his got a cute little face to match his cute little face, and Brody wanted Ryder's pumpkin to have a bat so a bat is what he got. And the only challenge after the clean-up, was keeping Ryder from touching the lit candles inside the pumpkins.
After our jack-o-lantern adventures on Sunday, it was on to trick-or-treating Monday!