Pumpkin Carving Party

We survived another pleasant pumpkin carving party.  The turnout this year was much lower, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but we did miss the regulars that didn't make it.  This was the first year Rita got to come (yay for retirement!) and she did a wonderful job keeping the kids out of our hair while we were getting ready, so it felt less rushed than usual.

Beside Rita's visiting, we had some other firsts.  The O'Reillys brought their home-grown jack-o-lantern pumpkins.  They weren't very big and a couple were still a bit greenish, but it was so cool for them to be able to do that.  I had seen them on the vine the day before and the pumpkin plants in their backyard are truly monstrous.  I am really tempted to turn the weedy flowerbed by our front porch into a pumpkin bed, but I'm afraid it's not getting enough sun.

I also took to opportunity to bring out the power jigsaw I bought this summer for working on my fence.  It really sped things up when it came to taking off the top of the pumpkin or carving the round eyes.  The only problem is that it spews mushy "sawdust" at interested bystanders.

Magda didn't carve a pumpkin yet. She and Kayleigh decorated some baby pumpkins with paints (most of which ended up all over Simone when she took over).  At my request, Magda drew me a picture of what her pumpkin was supposed to look like.  It was important that it had a stem (which meant I was going to carve her design on my bigun instead of the small, stemless one she had picked out) and it had to have bangs.  Not sure what was up with the bangs, but during the party she and Kayleigh got into trouble for cutting each other's hair, so maybe it was part of some theme.

All the pumpkins turned out great.  More importantly, the kids had a blast.  They decorated our driveway with chalk drawings and spent most of the time chasing each other around the house and the front yard.

Note: Meredith posted a bunch of cool pictures from the party.