Halloween pumpkins

It’s only 21 days until my favorite holiday, Halloween.  We have not decided what to be this year.  Blake’s choices have ranged from an eagle to a pig to a table to a traffic light to a ghost.  Pretty much whatever we’re looking at when we ask him what he wants to be is the name of the new outfit.  I’m hoping ghost sticks around because that’s easy.  I have not bought anything or started to make anything, but we have pumpkins!

We went out to dinner last Thursday night and were heading to ice cream afterwards when the topic of pumpkins came up.  All of a sudden, from the backseat, we heard, 

“I want to get a pumpkin.” 

“Instead of ice cream?” I asked incredulously.   

A slight pause.  And then...

“Yeah, pumpkin!”

I shouldn’t have been surprised at his decision since Blake is a child who would rather play than eat.    And even when he’s starving, he still won’t tell you he needs to eat.  His brother is the opposite:  eat trumps play.

So Sebe pulled a u-turn and headed to the grocery store.  No charming pumpkin patch for us—we were going for the bulk buy.  We got pumpkins for Blake, Sebe, Ali, Gavin, Princess (cat), Grandma B, Steve, and even Alice, their cat.  All were proportionately sized, of course.  Blake’s pumpkin was chosen for the first carve.  He searched for and found the carving kit that had made it into his mini grocery cart a few weeks ago.  And with wonderful supervision from Sebe, the drawing, scooping, planning and carving began.  Disclosure:  we did utilize one of the kit’s six face patterns for this jack-o-lantern.  I am not normally one for kits, but I am realizing that it’s occasionally all right to make things a little easier for yourself (and a young child).  Frankly, the kit was a big hit.  We even took a not-really-so-spooky video, starring Blake’s jack-o-lantern, to inspire even more of the Halloween spirit.

A few other Halloween games that Blake and Gavin have discovered:  roll the pumpkin, throw the pumpkin, kick the pumpkin, and today, while reading Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things that Go, Blake and I discussed making a pumpkin car, replete with Lego wheels.  Hmmm… I don’t think you’ll find that in a kit.