Chunkin' punkins

For various reasons, our family has always kind of bypassed the whole tradition of cutting faces in pumpkins for Halloween. We got pumpkins, and just set them out front posing as... you know... pumpkins.

This year, though, we decided to put faces on them. We got the kids together and went to work. I had forgotten how gross the inside of a pumpkin is. I cut the top off the first one, and put my hand inside to clean it out. Realizing how unpleasant that task was going to be, I exercised my "Dad Power" and told the kids, "Oops, I almost forgot. This is the fun part. You guys get to pull all the stuff out of the inside of your pumpkins, and put it in this bowl!" The kids said "Yay!" and stuck their hands in. Ha ha...

Eventually, we got them cleaned out and I helped Jiana draw the face on her pumpkin while Andrew drew on his. His design featured fangs, eyebrows, hair, and a lot of other stuff that would have looked cool, but would have been murder to carve out. I used a tomato knife to carve them out. It works great, like a coping saw for food.

Thus concludes this year's Halloween Special.