Pumpkin Time!

We visited Johansen's Farm today with Karen and her kids. They have a petting zoo, and lots of fun stuff....that all costs too darn much money. So instead, we just visited the front area which ONLY cost about $40 once my kids picked out the biggest pumpkins they could find! They could not be convinced that the cute little $3.29 pumpkins were far superior quality. Oh well, it's just once a year...or once every few years for us. I think we skipped pumpkins all together last year. I enjoy carving pumpkins...well I enjoy carving A pumpkin...but having to do 4 of them just somehow loses the thrill. I did have one brave child who wanted to try carving and that was Jack. He did a good job, and I was glad that I spent the money on the little pumpkin carving kit because the little pumpkin saw that was in it was much less scary that seeing my son with a butcher knife in his hands!

The pumpkin carving kit came with several patterns for those fancy-schmancy jack-o-lanterns, and I was actually a little worried that I was going to be in big trouble with those. But Jack and Carmella decided they wanted to draw their own faces to carve and I steered Nora and Gina to the easier patterns...whew! I actually am quite fond of the bat on Gina's pumpkin, but she wasn't so sure about it. Nora (like her mom) preferred an oblong pumpkin, and this face from the pattern book was just right for the look she wanted.

I thought it was cute out of all the kids, the one who didn't want to put their hands in the pumpkin goop was JACK! The girls dug right in, for the most part! I did have to do a lot of scraping once they got most of the seeds out. Oh, speaking of seeds...that was the whole reason to prompt this visit today. Carmella has a seed project due on Friday. I wonder if her teacher would reimburse me the $40 we spent just to get some pumpkin seeds! Haha!

Here's Gina digging in, she was very proud of herself for getting all the pumpkin seeds out on her own. Unfortunately, none of the kids took me up on my great idea to count all the pumpkin seeds from all 4 pumpkins! I can't imagine why not!!!

So as I finished carving each of the pumpkins, I put in a candle to show the kids how they would light up. And even though it wasn't dark, they loved them. And I did too. We made a HUGE mess, and I am making a mental note to drop by Mom & Dad's to get some newspapers for easier clean-up next year!

The 2 extras in the middle of the picture there are our little neighbors from across the street. They came over just in time for all the carving fun. The girls made fast friends and are just loving having playmates so close. And here are the pumpkins as they sit outside our house. I hope we didn't carve them TOO early, it would be kind of gross to have moldy pumpkins on Halloween...but the pictures have been taken, so this year we will have Halloween pages in the scrapbook! Hooray!