Pumpkin Carving

I realized today that it had been a little while since I had actually carved a pumpkin. In fact, I don't think that I have carved one since my pre-children era. So today we carved the pumpkins that the kids got at the pumpkin patch when they went as part of the church's children's activities.
At first I wasn't sure that Andy was actually going to let me carve the thing. He seemed more in favor of just drawing on it. But I am a traditionalist in this sense and I kept lobbying for actual carving.
In the end I think what helped convince Andy to let me cut into the thing is that we had done Doug's pumpkin first. Andy fell asleep (i.e., he stopped moving long enough to pass out)and while Andy (and Jo) were asleep Doug and I carved his pumpkin. I did all of the knife work and I did all of the scrapping out of the insides. I couldn't convince Doug to stick his hand down in the goop. He decided which side to put the face on and then also what shape to make the eyes (oval), nose (square), and how many teeth (lots mommy...we ended up with 8). He also specified that he wanted a happy pumpkin...not a scary one. Oh, and Doug thinks that it takes a long time to clean out the pumpkin because he probably asked me if I was done yet about a million times before I actually finished.
Andy liked the looks of Doug's pumpkin so we got to make a face (or as the boys said...a head) out of that one too. I couldn't convince Andy to deal with any of the goop either, but Josie was up to both elbows (and a little smeared on her forehead) in it. Andy choose circle eyes, a skinny triangle nose, and ten teeth (he held up both hands with all of the fingers out). He also specified that he wanted a smiling pumpkin.
Both boys were pleased with the results and we did put candles down in them and light them. I am pleased because I am the type that, starting about the first of October, had doodles all over the margins of my notebooks when I was younger because I was trying to decide what face to put on my jack-o-lantern. While I have seen a few other pumpkin carvings that I thought were neat, I really just like to put a face on them. I also dealt with the seeds after the boys had gone to bed, so I will be interested to see if they like toasted pumpkin seeds. Hopefully we didn't carve them too soon for our climate and they will last until Halloween.