Pumpkin Carving

We spent Monday carving pumpkins with the Zinkes. Growing up I always enjoyed carving pumpkins, but I've never had the patience to do any really intricate carving. Mostly, I just liked getting my hands dirty and squishing the pumpkin guts in between my fingers (I still like it). Justin, who enjoys doing the intricate carvings, gets easily frustrated with the short attention span of me and the boys and this year he decided that he was going to be an observer only. (I am sure though, that in a few years, he and the boys will want to do marathon intricate pumpkin carving sessions and I will be the observer - so it will even out.) Anyway, I thought that Clayton would get really into it this year. And he did - sort of. He refused to stick his hands inside the pumpkin!! He didn't want to get them dirty!! What kind of a boy is this!?! So he sat and used a spoon to scoop out the seeds - in case you're wondering, it's not very effective. Well, here are a few pictures of the event:
At first Clayton was fascinated with watching. I love the concentration on his face!

Eventually, he wanted to try to do it himself - without sticking his hands in the pumpkin! This didn't last too long. Once he figured out how long it was taking he decided that he was done.
Noah, however, didn't mind getting dirty. He wanted to eat every piece of pumpkin he could find. It was pretty funny, he'd taste it, make a disgusted face, and try it again! We were laughing pretty hard!
Eventually, I found myself carving our pumpkin alone. While this didn't really surprise me (short attention spans - remember) it did make me want to hurry and finish the pumpkin. In my haste I made a few mistakes...my pumpkins nose and eye are connected, it's not too noticable, but they are connected and when I drew the face on our pumpkin I drew him some teeth, I thought I was being a smartie and finding a really tricky and fast way to cut out the mouth, in reality, I just accidentally cut off all of his teeth. Oops! All in all, the carving only took about 45 minutes, which is the perfect amount of time for someone like me who has no patience for this sort of activity. And, despite my mistakes, I still think it turned out pretty cute:
Clayton took these pictures. He's not too bad!

It was a fun night with good food, good friends, and (if I do say so myself) a good, if not a little generic, pumpkin!