Jack-O-Lanterns!

 I love carving pumpkins.  It's my favorite thing about October.  Getting all the kids together and being creative and messy and having fun.  I love the slop of the seeds and I love eating roasted pumpkin seeds afterwards.  It's a lot of fun.  This year, for the first time, Benjamin refused to participate.  He sat in his room and came out to check out the progress from time to time but was never willing to carve.  For Peter, it was his first time and I expected him to be a little grossed out by the mess inside, but he dove right in and seemed unperturbed.  He couldn't understand that we dump the seeds into the bowl, though. He preferred to fling them all over the place as he violently shook each handful off his fingers.  To each his own.  He lost interest and went off to play on his own long before we finished carving, but the other two stuck with it and I finished Peter's and we are pretty happy with the result.

The middle one is supposed to be a cat sitting on the moon, but it looks more like a G or maybe a squirrel.  Either way, it was fun.

The funny story is how we got the pumpkins.  I had planned to buy some but forgot and so we were pumpkin-less on the afternoon we'd planned to carve. I was driving home with Bella when we passed a local insurance business.  There was a sign out-front that said, "Free Pumpkins" and there was a huge pile of pumpkins on the sidewalk.  I stopped and the insurance salesman said, "Welcome!  Pick a pumpkin.  You can get one each!"  He probably intended to try to sell us insurance but just as we were looking, his large inflatable Frankenstein started to blow over in the wind and he was so busy trying to right Frank, that we found our pumpkins, thanked him, and hopped back into our car before he could say a word.  That left us a pumpkin short, though, so I changed my clothes, did my hair differently, switched cars, and got Christian to come with me and we drove by there again.  This time he wasn't there at all but the pumpkins all still were, so we got one each again and drove back home, now with all the pumpkins we needed for all of us to have one.  It was absolutely perfect. Free pumpkins for the whole family. (Addendum: today, three days later, there are still about 20 pumpkins in front of the building.  Not sure what his plan is, but I'd be happy to take a few more off his hands.)

This week, also, Bella helped a fellow scout troop member complete her eagle scout project.  They built owl nesting boxes for local parks.  The girls worked for many hours and it went really well.  I was proud of Bella for her efforts and I love that she can do scouting in addition to her church activities.  It's a great program.