Halloween 2017: Our Pumpkins

If I had my way, we would drive to Ellijay, Georgia to visit Burt's Pumpkin Farm to get our pumpkin every year. But driving two hours for a pumpkin, no matter how nostalgic the experience, is not really practical.

There is a place close to our house that sells seasonal farm items (pumpkins in October, Christmas trees right after). They always have a cute display with a huge inflatable pumpkin, and Jack always begs to stop.

Since we weren't going to Burt's this year, we gave in and stopped at the local stand a couple of weeks before Halloween.

The boys proudly pulled little wagons around the lot and picked out our pumpkins. We decided to get one large pumpkin to carve and two smaller ones for the boys to paint.

If I am being honest, my natural tendency is to want to control everything. I want to have a spooky, perfect pumpkin face that I chose.

But life with kids is not like that. It is messy and you are constantly learning to let go. Yielding so your children can grow and learn, and be creative for themselves.

I let the kids paint their pumpkins. We spread out on our kitchen table and they did what they want. Then we set the pumpkins outside. It rained. Unfortunately we used water colors, so we ended up with orange pumpkins again! We re-purposed the little pumpkins for Jack's birthday party.

For the face of the jack-o-lantern, I had Jack draw what he wanted it to look like on a piece of paper. Then I transferred his drawing to the pumpkin.

Daniel cut the top off of our pumpkin and helped Jack pull out the guts. Then he helped him cut out some of the face while Isaac helped me sort the seeds from the guts to roast.

After the pumpkin's face was carved, Jack wanted to drill holes in the side and add stick arms. It wasn't how I would have done it, but it turned out to be a spooky pumpkin that the kids were proud of.

Confession: We haven't been carving pumpkins for that long. Our first year to carve a family pumpkin was 2016. I'm sure by next year we will be carving two pumpkins: one for each boy.

Pumpkin Carving 2016

Where we live it still doesn't feel like fall (we are wearing shorts most afternoons), but the leaves have finally started to change to brilliant shades of orange, yellow and red. Its one of my favorite times of the year.

Daniel and I have been married for almost 14 years, and in all of that time we have only carved one pumpkin together. We have always bought a pumpkin, and have actually gone to a pumpkin patch every year since having kids, but we haven't made the effort to carve said pumpkins.

To be fair, Daniel hasn't had a lot of time during the last two years to do extra projects like pumpkin carving. He has been at his new job for about a month, and we count our blessings daily now that he has more time to devote to family.

Before kids (and crazy job commitments), I guess we were just lazy in the decorating department. There were several years where we turned off our house lights and hid in our basement on Halloween night.

But that has changed. We are committed to holidays and all of the fun that goes along with them. Including pumpkin carving. As a friend said, now that we have started, there is no turning back.

Earlier this month, I was at the grocery store with our boys and Jack saw a display of small pumpkins and asked to get one. I said sure and we brought it home where he had the idea to paint his pumpkin. While Isaac napped, I set Jack up with the paints and then started cleaning the kitchen.

My back was turned for 5 minutes when I realized that Jack had decided to move from regular painting to finger painting and he had dumped almost all of the paint on the paper.

So I took a deep breath and helped him finish his project (note to self: I need to buy paints to replace what he used up on the pumpkin). He somehow managed to get a ton of paint on that little pumpkin – it took 3 days to fully dry!

Our pumpkin carving experience was a little smoother – we picked up our pumpkin at Old Mcdonald's Farm on Saturday and then carved the pumpkin on Sunday night after supper.

Poor Isaac did not enjoy this experience EXCEPT when he was sitting in Daniel's lap "helping" with the pumpkin, the few minutes he tried sword fighting everyone with a pool noodle, and then finally when he brought me snacks to give him. Isaac and his snacks... I'll leave it at that.

Jack turns 5 next month and he loved this activity. He didn't care to help with the guts of the pumpkin – he thought that part was too gross, but he enjoyed the rest of the process.

I had him pick a face from a Google search on my phone and then I quickly drew the face on the pumpkin and then Daniel helped Jack carve it out. Isaac got in the on the carving action a bit, but you can only let a 1.5-year-old wield a cutting tool for so long.

Jack thought it was cool to push the shapes out after they were cut, and was surprised about the candle going inside (evidently we are failing at holidays since he didn't know this).

Pumpkin carving was a bit messy but not nearly as bad as I imagined. I'm glad we carved a pumpkin this year and I'm looking forward to doing again in the future. Hopefully Isaac will have a better time next year.

Jack will probably think this is his own personal holiday activity since we told him that a carved pumpkin is called a "Jack"-o-lantern. Now we just need to get costumes for our boys. Jack says he is going to be a good super hero, but he doesn't know which one yet.