A Tale of Three Pumpkins

I am admittedly the Ebeneezer Scrooge of Halloween. The Grinch of fireworks on the 4th of July and the Scrooge of Halloween. In my defense, I really REALLY like Christmas. Since I am such a grievous disappointment to my children with my lack of appreciation for all things spooky or Halloween-ish, I decided to redeem myself by buying 3 pumpkins this year. Adam thought I did it just to torture him (I guess he's not really into the Halloween scene much either).

Braeden loves everything about Halloween except cleaning out the pumpkin. This was him in 2003:


This is him in 2008:


More hair, taller, same horrified expression.

I told him that since he wanted his own pumpkin, he had to clean it out.


Emma on the other hand, relished the task. She'd scoop a big handful of the goopy stuff out, drop it in the bowl and flick her wrist spreading seeds and strings of pumpkin innards around the room. Lovely, lovely holiday tradition.


Mark was the creative consultant for his pumpkin but I took over after he flipped a seed into his eye while trying to spoon it out.


And what was Adam doing during all of this? I asked him to take some pictures and then he started wandering around the house taking some artistic photos. I've got to admire his illusive-ness when it came jack-o-lantern time. He did take all the remains of the pumpkins and newspapers out to the garbage though. That deserves some high praise.

Here are some of his shots:




And the pumpkins:

This is Mark's. It's The Cheat which is from Homestarrunner which you may or may not know about depending on if you have tween sons and/or are friends with the Jorgensens (who introduced the world of Homestar and Strong Bad and the gang to us).

Another Homestarrunner character, Pom Pom. This one is Braeden's.

Emma did an old school jack-o-lantern.

After tomorrow, people will start to take the garish decorations off their house, I will have a supply of chocolate to pilfer from my unsuspecting children (who am I kidding, they'll suspect me), and carving the pumpkins will be 364 days away.

Life is good.