carving pumpkins

Saturday night while in Utah, we carved pumpkins. Jed and I had been reading LOTS of Halloween stories before we left on our trip and he was anxious to carve pumpkins. Since we would be getting home so close to Halloween, I wasn't sure if we'd have time to do it at our house. My mom called to say that their neighbors were selling pumpkins for $2 apiece and did we want to do some while we were there, so we were able to carve pumpkins with Auntie Hanna, Nana and Papah! 

 Dave cut each pumpkin open and then each of us were free to scoop out the goop and carve our own faces.

 Jed wasn't really sure how he felt about all that slimy goop.

 My son, wielding a knife. Ever since we started reading stories about carving pumpkins, he has been snatching knives and poking them at pumpkins. Thankfully he has only been able to find butter knives! He was THRILLED to finally have a sharp knife and permission to actually poke a pumpking. We let him jab at it for a few tries, then took the knife away and occupied him with picking out what kind of face he wanted his pumpkin to have.

 Everyone working on a pumpkin!

 Dave and I decided our pumpkins were perfect candidates to look like Bert and Ernie. I think we did a pretty good job!

 Jed was so excited to see how the pumpkins looked once they were lit up!

 He spent quite a bit of time running up to them, watching them flicker and glow.

 After the carving was over, we lit a fire in the backyard and roasted a few marshmallows. It was not too cold and we had a really nice time, poking sticks in the fire and just talking. We looked at the stars and tried to sneak up on the neighbors' cat that was prowling around.

 Once again, Jed wouldn't eat a toasted marshmallow but ate plenty of "raw" ones. He did let us put one on his stick and he promptly set it afire. He thought that was AWESOME!

What a fun night!