last-minute pumpkin carving

Have you ever had a kid beg so much to carve a pumpkin? No? I did. On Halloween night, my oldest's eyes welled up when I told him carving pumpkins was too messy and that we wouldn't be doing it.

oh great. just give me the worst-mom award now.

I put on my big girl panties, set out some wax paper on my new table, got all the tools out and hoped for the best.

I told him to bring in the pumpkin from the front porch and instantly, I made his entire world all better. He grunted and groaned putting that sucker on the table. Then I told him he needed to sketch the face before carving into it. And he did. All without my help (I love independent kids, don't you know?)

So I drew the face on the pumpkin, made beginning marks with the knife and let them have a go at it. The cleaning really grossed them out so I helped a lot on that step, but they wanted to do it all. They're big boys now, I suppose.

Andrew hated cleaning out the seeds, it was terribly disgusting he said.

But after it was all said and done, they both loved looking at their handy-work light up on our front steps. Jonah thought he needed a glowstick as his hat.