Happy Halloween!

Cale, Mer, Kelly, Naija and I carved pumpkins last night! This is a Halloween tradition in our family, and by happenstance, beginning to carve at 10:30pm has also become a bit of a tradition. My Dad's birthday is October 30th, which falls the day before Halloween every single year {weird how that happens} so the carving starts after Dad's party.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDIO!!!!
We'd carve our pumpkins before Dad's birthday, but we've discovered the hard way that the squirrels consider our pumpkins food rather than the art they clearly are, and we only get a day or two before the nibbling starts.

On this particular October 30th, we didn't have pumpkins yet. Mer had one from Ka (a friend of Kelly's who actually grew a pumpkin just for Mer!) but the rest of us didn't.

Hmmm...where to find a pumpkin at 10pm??? Kelly, Mer & Naija went to a roadside pumpkin palace and discovered that they were still open and wouldn't close while Kelly was there. So she called me (still driving back from my Dad's) and told me to hurry while she milled around indecisively scouting. I'll bet it was 15 minutes from the time she started til we got there...they must have thought she was out-of-her-gourd! (no groaning from the peanut gallery!)



It took us past midnight, but we carved our pumpkins. The kids did an amazing job! Here's Mer with her creation.

Note the word BOO carved into to jack-o-lantern's face.

Here's Cale with his. I can't believe the creepiness!!! I wonder if the squirrels will be too afraid to bother this one?

And mine: A simple little ghost. I'm just glad this wasn't a competition!