Happy Halloween!

We carved our pumpkin Thursday night. Sadly there aren't pumpkin patches here so I have no pictures of the boys in a wagon of hay with the autumn sun on their golden heads or dragging the biggest pumpkin they could find or move. Instead we bough a giant pumpkin at Tesco weeks ago, which ended up rotting around the stem before we could even carve it. We bought a bunch of small ones for cooking and a medium sized one for carving. We've already roasted one, which Silas thought was pretty exciting itself, so carving one was cause for even more craziness.
Here's the cleanout. Silas did not want to stick his hands in the goo and kept asking us to loosen up the guts so he could scoop it out. Meanwhile, we had to hang on to Emmet to keep him from diving in head first. Good thing the pumpkin wasn't much bigger or he really would have climbed inside.

Silas flipped through the book of pumpkin patterns Grandma Lise sent us last year and picked out a really complicated castle design. We started this project after dinner, so we had to talk him down to teh gargoyle/dragon design instead. But because of the little saws that came with the book he was able to do a little of the carving himself. "Move it up and down and push toward the jagged edge." I think he managed about three inches of the curved section above the dragon's head. But he did actually get to remove a piece, so he felt he accomplished something, and was really proud of himself.

Here's the finished pumpkin with the boys, and then with the candle behind it. Orrin hasn't quite perfected jack-o-lantern photography, but you get the idea. Hope everyone had a very happy and safe and warm and cosy Halloween.