Since Halloween is only but a couple of days away, I decided to share mine and my husband's pumpkin carving story. Really there's not much to it, as nothing very exciting happened. But I want to remember that night so I'm "writing" it down! I have been carving a pumpkin every Halloween since I became an adult and I find it therapeutic and enjoyable. Not many people I know share in this excitement, so I was thrilled when I learned my husband enjoys it too. And even though my daughter is still too young to participate in the actual carving, we let her decorate her very own pumpkin (with mama's help of course), and she also helps us scrape the guts out of ours. Okay, the last part of that sentence sounded disgusting.

I was shopping at Kroger one day and saw that they had all of their large pumpkins half off and buy one get one free. What a steal! I was alone and had a cart full, so I asked my husband to go back later to pick out some good ones. And he did. They were great carving pumpkins, and my daughter got a little one all for herself that her Memaw had gotten her a few days before. We also had some pumpkin carving kits left over from last Halloween, we were good to go. I picked out my picture and my husband picked out his: a gargoyle and a zombie. I was carving the zombie at my daughter's request. Even though they were rated at the highest difficulty level, we took on the challenge. I've carved far more pumpkins than my husband, so he was a bit concerned about the difficulty. I wasn't worried. He was concerned last year and his pumpkin turned out great. I'll post last years pumpkins below. Eric carved the Grim Reaper and I carved the ghost.

See? I think his turned out better than mine. So me and my daughter got her pumpkin decorated with a picture she picked out, and then Eric and I set up everything to start carving. Our twins were taking a nap and it ended up being a very uneventful and peaceful ordeal. Other than the mumbled questionable words I heard my husband utter every once in a while. I finished mine and Eric looked up: "you're done....already?!" I chuckled and responded with a "yep!" and started to clean up. About a half hour later he finally finished. And of course, it looked great! We lit them up, took some pictures and placed them on the front porch.





Please excuse the poor lighting in the pictures, the street lamp out front made it difficult to get good ones. But as you can see, they turned out well. We were pleased and our daughter loved them! We have been having a ton of rain, so they have already rotted before Halloween has even arrived. But we got about a week and a half of enjoyment out of them, so I'd say that's pretty good. I try to wait till pretty close to Halloween to carve them, but there is always a gamble that they won't last if it isn't just a few days before. I really enjoy these moments in our family. I enjoy the time I get to spend with Eric just doing something we both enjoy. And I will enjoy involving our children in the tradition as they get older. It's the little things! Happy Halloween!

Hugs and Love,