Grandma brought home three lonely pumpkins from the store. Unfortunately they did not find a good home with us. Shortly after they arrived we scalped them, pulled out their guts and carved into their faces. Messy, goopy fun!
I must say that we haven't done a lot of pumpkin carving in our home. The pumpkins that usually make their way through our doors are safe from the usual torture... that is until I steam them and make them into pie or bread. That procedure is quick and painless by comparison to the torment we inflicted upon them today.
Sam and Ty have never carved pumpkins before, which explains Samantha's expression when she stuck her spoon in and pulled out a blob of pumpkin guts. "Yuuuuck! Goop!" she hollered. Classic!
For the most part, Grandma and I did most of the gut-scooping as it was a little challenging for the the younger two. Tyler was completely unwilling to stick his hands inside to pull out the mess. Luke, on the other hand, scooped out all the insides of his pumpkin all by himself and separated out each and every pumpkin seed into a bag. Future surgeon? He is determined that we cook up the seeds so that we can eat them.
For the face designs, Grandma drew out a sample on a piece of paper for the kids to choose from before we began carving. Samantha and Tyler picked out a similar design for their pumpkins face carving, but Luke came up with a design all his own that he decided to demonstrate on his own face.
Each of the children were not to be separated from their newly tortured friends at bedtime and took their mutilated pumpkins to their rooms with them. We got battery-operated candles to put inside them, so no safety issues there. I drew the line at letting them actually sleep with their pumpkins, having to put my foot down that they were to stay on their dressers.
Where is Rebekah in all this you wonder? Rebekah is on a warm California vacation with her dad, missing out on all the pumpkin torture here at home.