Pumpkin Carving!

This year we got pumpkins from our garden!!! Two nice size ones, one a bit smaller and then a little guy I was hoping would turn orange, but sadly didn't make it. I told the kids this year we were not going to carve our pumpkins as early as we did last year. Those pumpkins didn't even make it to Halloween and then pretty much turned into pumpkin soup on our front porch. It was a really good place to start a fruit fly colony though!!! ;P

The kids had been counting down the days until October 25th when the dissection of gourds would commence. They were super stoked! Sadly the little bit smaller pumpkin had already gone south. Of course that would be Ella's pumpkin and she was in full on crocodile tears because of it. Zeke was actually at Ga-Ga & Pa's so he wasn't in on the action either. Since the small green one didn't turn orange and instead got all mushy Ga-Ga was already planning on buy Zeke his own pumpkin. After a quick text Ga-Ga had an additional pumpkin on her shopping list. Ella and Zeke would get to enjoy painting them together later in the week. Unfortunately I was busy making dinner and ended up with zero pictures of them painting so you'll just have to imagine it.  

I penciled in the line so the boys knew where to cut the tops off at. 

Charlie was interested in pumpkin. I'm sure he was wondering if it was something yummy to eat. After getting a good smell he walked away so I'm thinking that pumpkin isn't high up on the kitty list of yummy foods! 

Ella was able to recover from the heartbreak of losing her home grown pumpkin and Jack was so kind he even let her help him a bit with some of the cutting. 

Siblings....they CAN have sweet moments! 

Ewww...that's gross!!! 

Yanking the top off! 

This year I got tough with Owen and made him clean out his pumpkin. He is so freaked out about getting messy and touching gross stuff so it was time for him to face his fear and move on. He did great, but he never really did stop making his completely grossed out face. I did use the spoon to scrape down the sides of the pumpkin, but I made him take out all the gunk. 

I scraped down the sides for Jack too, but he was great....he ain't afraid of no slime!!! 

Jackson wanted his pumpkin to look scary. He drew a picture of it on paper and then I cut it out on the pumpkin. Earlier in the day I picked up a whole bag of Halloween decorations from the Des Moines Buy Nothing Facebook page. One of the things in the bag was this cool color changing light that you can put inside the pumpkin. 

It looked pretty creepy when it changed to red! 

Owen carved his all by himself! 

He wanted his to have vampire teeth! 

So proud of his pumpkin! 

While the boys were carving their pumpkins Michael was out working...he was on call the whole week and got an after hours call and had to head out. He got back right when we finished up....just in time for a fall time treat! Green apples and caramel sauce! 

Cute princess girl! 

The dreaded bunny ears! Silly Owen! 

Even though Zeke wasn't with us we still had fun and he wasn't lacking fun being at Ga-Ga and Pa's all by himself with no other children he had to take turns with on the TV or the Kindle! 

Oh yeah and he got to go play on the toys at the mall!