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.