Jack-O-Laterns and Trick-or-Treating

May I begin by saying carving pumpkins is SO OVERRATED!!!  Halloween is a holiday geared towards kids and then you have a tradition that involves cutting a pumpkin with a knife!  Seriously, I think it is pure torture for the parents and the kids.  You have a child that wants to cut it but can't, and one parent ends up doing all the work (thanks Babe!) while the other one keeps the kids entertained while watching their pumpkin be transformed into a jack-o-latern, all the while asking are you almost done???  And why we let our kids choose a "pumpkin family" at the pumpkin patch so each one of us is represented is beyond me!  What were we thinking?  Ok.   So maybe it wasn't that bad but we're definitely only getting 3 pumpkins next year, not 5.  So this great tradition took us 2 days to complete because Andy thought it would take less than 20 minutes to complete.  I told him probably an hour.  We were both wrong.  We got the smallest pumpkin completely carved and next smallest cleaned out.  Great progress, I know.  Andy had to go home teaching and he came back with those pumpkin cutter knives.  Great invention.  So the next day, Halloween, around 3 pm (I know we're not the only ones that waited until the 11th hour to get pumpkins carved before Halloween night.) we started the whole process over again with these magical knives.  (If you haven't seen them before, they're not sharp so the kids can't get hurt but they can cut through a pumpkin.)  So a little after 4:30 pm we were done!  I think Andy did a great job.  

We ate dinner and got the kids ready for Trick-or-Treating.  Ella didn't want to wear her tutu for her ballerina costume but somehow she understood that if she didn't wear it she wouldn't get candy so we finally got her to wear it.  I think she looked pretty cute.  She was hilarious when we went trick-or-treating.  She wouldn't let the person at the door put the candy in her bag.  She had to hold it until we got to the next house and then she would put that piece of candy in her bag and take the candy from the next person.  Braden and Taylor had fun taking turns ringing the doorbell.  The weather was nice.  It started to get windy and there was a little sprinkle toward the end but much better than last year.  Taylor and Braden decided they wanted to be done so we headed back home.  I think they had more fun passing out candy to our trick-or-treaters than they did going trick-or-treating.  

This morning they wanted to play "trick-or-treat" and took turns ringing the doorbell and passing out the candy.  Ella sort of played with them but was more focused on eating the candy than playing.  Ella has definitely eaten the most candy.  

Hope you had a Happy Halloween!!