Pumpkin Carving 2009

This year for pumpkin carving we invited some friends from church over to join us. I have no idea how we ended up with so many pumpkins, but we had about 7 of them of various shapes and sizes. There was no way we were going to carve them all, but we did manage to make some creations with about half of them.

I love this first photo as it shows Sydney and about as deep as she would put her hands in the pumpkins. She is "helping" me clean out the gunk, but would only go so far as her wrist. If you haven't carved a pumpkin before, let me tell you, there isn't much gunk that far up - its at the bottom! Even with a spoon she wouldn't dive in - so she helped me for a minute and then ran off to play with John and Kate. The other great thing about this photo is you can see Rich in the background very intently working on his pumpkin - he was serious!

Please don't call child protective services on us for the lack of safety precautions in the following photos. Yes, that is John sucking on a screwdriver (it was promptly removed after this photo). Last year he was practically head-first into the pumpkins, trying to eat the guts out of the bowl, gushing it through his hands - you know, typical boy stuff. Nope, not this year. He wouldn't go near them. He refused to stick his hand in even for a photo op, so we have NO photos of the child cleaning out pumpkins. He was much more excited about trying to get the tools from us, you know, knives, and such, and "help" that way.

Again - note the concentration on Rich!

Here's Daddy working on cleaning out the perfect pumpkin for the year's creation. Last year he downloaded a "scary face" and took an hour or two to carve it on the pumpkin. This year he branched out to characters and delivered Minnie Mouse on a pumpkin for Sydney.

Sydney got a hold of one of the smaller pumpkins and decided to take matters into her own hands to carve it. We didn't really think she'd get very far (we thought she'd get bored) but she's as determined, or is that as stubborn, as her father and managed to make her own hole all the way around the top using a screwdriver (yes, same one John was sucking on) as we wouldn't let her use a knife. She punctured holes all the way around and then yanked the top off. She of course then stopped short of cleaning it out herself.

Here is Rich working on step 2 of his creation. After the pumpkin was cleaned out he taped the template onto the pumpkin and used an exacto-knife (yes, child's hand a bit close, we know) and put small holes in to make a pattern on the pumpkin. He then spent an incredible amount of time cutting out all these little intricate pieces. I think he spent about 1 1/2 hours, maybe 2, on his carving. Jackie, Jason and I managed to carve on each (see below), clean up, feed the kids dinner and prepare dinner for the adults in the same amount of time.

And here are the finished products. Sydney is proudly sitting by Minnie Mouse (who was nicknamed "Minnie Moose" as we thought it looked like a Moose from a distance), John is screaming "Happy Halloween" next to Jackie's pumpkin (complete with eyebrows). My tall man is next - and yes, I do carve the same thing each year; and Kate is leaning against Jason's "Scary Man" - and Sydney's top-removed-but-not-gutted-or-carved pumpkin had to be included in the picture.

Here is a close-up of the smiling kids and smiling pumpkins. Too much fun!