Pumpkin Carving

This year I thought it would be fun for the kids to carve their own pumpkins.  I thought with Madeline and Spencer older we might actually be able to handle pumpkin carving.  I knew Anthony doesn't care to touch the insides of a pumpkin, but I was curious what Spencer would do with his no holding back personality.  I heard the pumpkin carving kits were safe for kids and for the most part kids could manage carving their own pumpkin.  With that in mind I decided to buy three kits with visions in my head of all of our kids successfully carving their own pumpkins and making these beyond description designs.  Well the best laid out plans and visions in ones head don't always come to pass.

The pumpkin carving kits are neat in theory, but in practicality don't work.  Sure they are safe for kids and our kids were not cut during the process; but the blade just couldn't hold up to our hearty Texas pumpkins.  They easily bent and after a few attempts to cut through the pumpkin the blade broke.  Grant and I bandage the blade as best as we could so we could salvage our visionary pumpkin carving experience, which meant Grant and I proceeded to carve the pumpkins for Madeline and Spencer.  Luckily Anthony was able to manage himself.  Grant helped Madeline and I helped Spencer.  

This year Anthony enjoyed cleaning out the inside of the pumpkin and my no holding back Spencer did not care to touch the inside of the pumpkin.  In fact anytime his hand would come in contact with the inside of a pumpkin, Spencer would have to run inside as fast as his legs would go to wash his hands.  By the end of the night Spencer had the cleanest hands and our bathroom drain was full of pumpkin seeds.  The cutting process proved to be too tedious for Spencer so he resorted to dancing around the garage.  Since there was no music playing I am sure he was dancing to the music in his head.  I can only imagine the concerts that are played in that precious boys' head.  Madeline also found the carving process to be tedious, but she chose a different art form then dancing.  While her dad was carving his heart out with a bandage saw blade Madeline was adding to her pumpkins design.  She felt the template was not complete and her halloween ghost needed eye brows, ears, and other various parts.  Luckily for us Anthony stuck with his carving and finish designing and carving his Jedi.  After sometime we finally finish and though Spencer gave up dancing and went inside to do who knows what, Madeline stuck out to the very end with her Daddy and her beloved pumpkin.

So the lesson learn this year was that pumpkin carving is wonderful and fun in theory, but painting a pumpkin brings the same amount of joy to children and less headache to parents.  So next year we will paint our designs and save us, the parents, the work of carving.