Carve it Up!

When I was in first grade, my elementary school teacher asked all the students what their favorite season was. She had them written on the board (otherwise, I'm not quite sure we all would have known what they were - I am from West Virginia after all! ;) I thought about which was my favorite, then decided they were all great and that I would just pick the shortest one - Fall! Pretty lazy I know, but if you read my post on kids chores, you already thought that of me! My first grade teacher (who had taught all 3 of my older siblings) said that each of them had picked Fall too. Guess we're all a little lazy, either that or Fall IS the best season!

Who doesn't love not having to turn on the A/C (saving all that money on electricity!), appreciating all the beautiful changing leaves, running through a few leaf piles or two (we've done this a lot lately), corn mazes, pumpkin patches, apple cider, hot cocoa, SOUP! (lots and lots of yummy soups!), then of course there's blessed Halloween - candy lovers dream holiday! 

No 2 year old should ever possess this much candy...so Austin and I "confiscated" most of it. Now I realize that no adult, should ever possess this much candy.

This boy cannot hold his candy. This was after 3 pieces...

Yes, Fall is definitely the best. We have a few Fall/Halloween traditions around here - Halloween sugar cookies, corn mazes/pumpkin patches, trick or treating (of course!) and - my all time LEAST favorite activity of the year! - carving pumpkins.

I HATE carving pumpkins. It is messy, time consuming and I have ZERO (and that's being generous) artistic ability or vision. I dread pumpkin carving at the very mention of the letter P.....

Well, maybe that might be an exaggeration, but really, you get the picture. 

I didn't realize how much I hated carving pumpkins until I started dating Austin (my husband), and he wanted to carve pumpkins together for Halloween. I had assumed his would look like all mine did growing up - triangle eyes, nose and maybe a jagged smile if we were lucky (thinking I got my lack of carving skills from my dear old dad who had carving duty for all of his 11 kids! No wonder he kept it simple!) 

Austin and I got our pumpkins and started cutting at them - hard work. Then gutting them - gross and messy. Then he asked me what kind of scene or picture I was going to carve or something? I laughed, thinking he must be joking. Of course I would be doing the standard triangles, what else? He carved something like this:

This one is actually from 2011, a request from our oldest

Oh no! I was pretty worried that once he saw what I was carving it would be a deal breaker for him and he'd be out of that relationship!

Thankfully he was understanding and humbly volunteered to carve the pumpkins for the rest of our marriage. True love. Now you realize that I really do have "the best husband ever!" (as Sarah likes to say)

I am slowly getting over my pumpkin carving phobia/hatred and starting to enjoy and appreciate the research, design, and hours that my husband spends carving the coolest pumpkins ever for our kids! 

Check out some of the cool ones he's done in the past.

Inspired by a picture of our only child at the time

Once he finished it and we lit it up, we vowed to never make a pumpkin like this again - it's creepy looking! It's hard to see your sweet baby in the same way after you get a load of this.

This one was pretty cool because the mouth was the "lid"

Recently Austin has let the kids design their own pumpkins. This one is what Luke (6) drew last year, then Austin carved it.

During the sesame street years....

Ironman...so much detail! I really thought this one was awesome. The downside was that it withered very quickly...too much detail.

Can't wait to see what this guy, and others like him, come up with this year!