Of all the available fall traditions, I have to admit that carving jack-o-lanterns has not been among my favorites these past several years of having kids. As a child, I loved it! As a parent, not so much.
It's messy and involves sharp knives--not exactly the ideal kid-friendly activity in my book. For the past few years, I have waited to see if the kids would notice or not. They forgot at least one year and I breathed a (silent) sigh of relief as Halloween passed without my hand fishing seeds and guts out of a pumpkin.
This year Nathan remembered with plenty of time to spare. We received some massive pumpkins from our neighbor's garden earlier this fall that were just begging to be carved. We decided that Tuesday after school would work out best.
Landen prepped the table with our usual garbage bags and newspaper. Then an amazing thing happened! Each of the three big kids began carving their OWN jack-o-lanterns. I was close by to supervise, of course, but I barely had to touch any pumpkin guts at all. Wohoo!
As a side note, we discovered that the Pampered Chef My Safe Cutter knife works GREAT for carving pumpkins. The boys used the two knives that I had from beginning to end and they wouldn't give them up. Teresa was stuck with a usual paring knife, but that worked out just fine, too.
Rachel wasn't too excited about the whole carving idea, but she did show up to make some funny faces for the camera.
Here are each of them displaying their creative ideas and carving skills--
With a row of jack-o-lanterns now lining our deck, it's beginning to look a lot like Halloween!
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