Pumpkins!

Early in October, our neighborhood had a pumpkin painting party down at our community playground. Cody and Jaden enjoyed picking out their pumpkins at the grocery store almost as much as they liked actually painting the pumpkins! I didn't get a picture of their completed pumpkins since it was dark outside by the time we were done. Jaden painted his with splotches of green and then attempted to write his name. Cody painted a whole scene with a witch stealing a pumpkin.

Closer to Halloween we bought two new pumpkins for carving. Before cutting into the pumpkins, I had both boys look with me on the website pumpkinlady.com. This was a GREAT place to scroll through hundreds of free, printable pumpkin carving designs. This year, we chose to just focus on pumpkin faces. Jaden and Cody didn't even browse past the letter A name pumpkins before they made their decisions. Jaden chose a pumpkin face named Alistair, and Cody's pumpkin was named Arlo. Selecting their own pumpkin faces made Cody and Jaden even more excited to begin the carving process. So, of course, we began by cutting the pumpkin top...

...and then scooped out the insides. Both boys requested gloves for this step. Ha!

Not surprisingly, Daddy and Mommy ended up doing most of the pumpkin gut-scooping. :)

Once the pumpkins were fairly clean inside, we taped on the Arlo and Alistair faces and began carving.

Despite what it may look like in the above pictures, neither boy was yet able to maneuver his own carving knife. If Mommy or Daddy got the knife in position, they could often push the knife into the pumpkin, so that was about their extent of helping out this year. Progress every year, I guess! :)

Both boys helped to poke out their pumpkin's eyes and noses.

Cody was VERY eager to tear off the template and check out Arlo.

And here they are... the temporary Halloween additions to the Schleicher family:

Arlo, carved by Cody and Mommy

and Alistair, carved by Jaden and Daddy

Jaden and Cody's favorite picture of their pumpkins:

The day after our carving experience, Jaden and Cody treated these pumpkins like dear friends. The boys washed the pumpkins down several times with wet paper towels, sat on the porch next to them for long periods of time, and even tried dressing the pumpkins up with hats and other dress-up clothes. I guess we can call the pumpkin carving experience a success! :)