The Great Pumpkin

It occurred to me this month that I don't think Don and I have ever carved a pumpkin together. Wow. How very sad. I guess for the longest time we didn't have kids, and for the most part have been in apartments where you don't get many trick-or-treaters.

Not this year. This year, as I perused the halloween candy while grocery shopping at 9pm on a Saturday night, I figured the question was not if I would buy enough. I am pretty sure that the answer to that, no matter how many bags I got, was going to be no.  That is because this year we live in a neighborhood full of kids again, and we have two of our own now. So this year I bought a TON of candy and a pumpkin, which we carved as a family this evening.

Now, I don't know how these traditions went for Don when he was a kid, but it went exactly the way I remember it as a kid:

We all spread out the tools, trash bag, and bowl in the back yard. Don started cutting and promptly all the cheap carving tools broke, so then I was running back and forth in and out of the house to retrieve a variety of other knives till we found one that worked ok. Then, Audrey squealed and whined about all the slimy pumpkin guts. She wanted to help so bad, but each time she stuck her hands in and they got gooey she would start to cry, "Oh no!" So finally she busied herself with drawing the cat design with the marker on the back of the pumpkin. I sorted out all the pumpkin seeds for roasting solo while Don worked on the pumpkin.

Just as we finished the last two cuts, of course the pumpkin gave way and the whole cat popped out and Don cut himself a little. Don was muttering under his breath after that, but one Cinderella band-aid and three toothpicks later we had ourselves a beautiful jack-o-lantern. You would never know what a long hour this was from the great pics, so I hope you enjoy the story.

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