Carving Pumpkins

We took our pumpkins over to Mimi and Poppi's house on Sunday for Drew and Mikayla to carve. These are the pumpkins that Drew and Mikayla picked out this year, and they had been at our house as part of our "fall decorations" the whole month of October. We had the scarecrow, yellow mums, pumpkins, etc. Mikayla also went to the pumpkin patch with her class from daycare this month and picked her "little"pumpkin. (I sure wish I had pictures from that trip to post on here!!) Since we live on a busy street, we don't give out candy at our house - we've always just gone to my mom and dad's house. That's where we have always put our jack-o-lanterns to invite the trick-or-treaters!

This year was really neat because it was the first year that Mikayla has paid a little attention to what was going on. You can see she was not too crazy about getting her hand messy here! Drew doesn't mind putting his hand in there at all! Poppi pretended he wasn't enjoying this, but you can tell by the look on his face that he was having a ball!

Mikayla decides to give it another try, this time she proceeds to put her sleeve and all in!

Drew pokes the hole in his pattern as daddy looks on. He was determined to have a spider carved into his pumpkin this year!

Mikayla didn't really pay much attention to her pumpkin after all the seeds were out! Here she practices writing her name with Poppi as Grandma (her great-grandma) looks on!

Once Drew finished poking holes for the pattern, I used the blade to carve it for him. Craig started poking holes for Mikayla's pattern (she wanted a kitty cat in her pumpkin), but it didn't take him long to tire. So, I finished poking holes in Mikayla's pumpkin before I started carving Drew's. Craig was to carve Mikayla's while I was carving Drew's. Again, it didn't take him long to tire and Poppi finished carving Mikayla's while we were at a birthday party! What would we do without Mimi and Poppi??

Finished Product!! Drew and Mikayla loved having these lit! They did turn out pretty great, huh?

**On a side note, we had to save ALL of the seeds from both of these pumpkins - per Drew's request. He wanted to plant the seeds to grow pumpkins in our yard next year. Again, Poppi came to the rescue and explained to Drew that if we planted ALL of those seeds the pumpkin vines would take us over. So we washed and dried all of the seeds, but I salted and roasted most of them for Drew and Mikayla to try! It was their first time trying pumpkin seeds (it was also Craig's first time eating them)! We couldn't talk Poppi into trying one, but Drew, Mikayla, and Craig all seemed to enjoy them! We will plant a few of the pumpkin seeds from this year and see what happens next year with our vine(s). Who knows - we just might get the biggest pumpkin!