Thursday, October 30, 2008

Annual Pumpkin Carving and "Fright Night"

Every year since the kids were little, Steve has carved the pumpkin with them. They have a tradition where the kids each draw several ideas for the eyes, nose and mouth and then submit their ideas to Steve. He mixes and matches the ideas to create one jack-o-lantern with creations from both Alexander and Sophia.

I helped out with some of the dirty work while the kids drew their creations.

The kids submitted their ideas to Steve who made a final decision as to which eyes (never matching eyes since one comes from Alexander and the other from Sophia), nose, and mouth would be used.

Then Steve began drawing out the face. So far, so good.

Perfect! The pumpkin was ready to carve!

This year the pumpkin was very thick and we forgot to bring it in from the cold so Steve had the ingenius idea of using Alexander's jigsaw to carve the pumpkin. It worked really well! This was the fastest pumpkin carving in our family's history.
Finished!
Not a year goes by that we don't have the official "completed picture" and then the "goofy completed picture."
Finally, the jack-o-lantern found its new home outside on our front porch.
We had a perfect evening. Sophia named it "Fright Night". This year the kids are going over to a friend's house to trick or treat with a group of their friends. This will be the first year of not dressing up and trick or treating together as a family. So, we decided to celebrate an evening of Halloween fun together by combining the pumpkin carving tradition and adding on new fun . We started out by eating homemade chili while watching Monday's episode of Heroes, then we went to the Haunted Dungeon sponsored by our park district. This was our first haunted house experience as a family. We chose something not too scary, which turned out to be just right and then headed home for pumpkin carving. The whole evening was a delight.

3 comments:

  1. OK, I forgot to get a pumpkin this year. Today is my husband's birthday and we spent the day just driving around, looking at the trees and getting some lunch. But tomorrow is Halloween! Must get a pumpkin. Thanks for the reminder and the idea to use a saw. Very helpful. :)

    And very nice job on your creation, I might add.

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  2. The Jack-O-Lantern looks great!! We didn't get ours carved with Earl working so much. He thought he was going to get yesterday off to do it, but he didn't. Oh well, now we have Thanksgiving decorations. The haunted house sounds like fun.

    Glad you guys had a great night!
    Sherry

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