Jack-o-Lantern Carving

Halloween morning got a little rough at our house, with me losing my temper because I have so much to do, so many balls to juggle, and some of us (who shall remain anonymous) have been difficult to motivate to complete their schoolwork. It was...a frustrating morning...and Halloween, too, so I'm sure that contributed to the general chaos of the day. 

Also, a neighbour was having some trees removed in their yard so we were hearing chainsaws all day and...I should have been aware of how that was affecting me so I could have put earplugs in or something (too much ambient noise tends to make me really tense), but I didn't. Instead I just lost my temper in a huge way.

See this pumpkin? That's a little bit how our morning felt.

Evidently it was too hot for this little guy and he rotted from the bottom up on our front porch and we didn't even notice until we tried to pick him up to carve him.

He left a big, stinky mess on the porch, and that was also frustrating. 

But you know what? We rallied. 

We carved those pumpkins. We had dinner. We got in our costumes. And we enjoyed the rest of our Halloween. So altogether it sounds like a win to me.

Here are the kids planning out their pumpkins:

They had grand designs to start out with, but I advised them to (a) work in pairs because I just couldn't handle six carved pumpkins right now, and (b) to think simple because carving pumpkins is trickier than it appears. So...we teamed up and we simplified and things worked out great.

I helped Phoebe with a big pumpkin:

Miriam and Alexander worked together on a snake pumpkin:

Zoë and Benjamin worked together on a pumpkin they ended up naming "Queen Elizabeth the Hearse-t," which they thought was a pretty clever name. Rachel carved her own little pumpkin.

Here's Phoebe stabbing various carving tools into the eyes of our pumpkin:

I don't think I ever wrote about how she wanted an apple the other day, but I told her no. 

When she pushed with her, "Why?" I told her that she needed to wait because she'd already had first breakfast and second breakfast and a snack and it was almost time for lunch and besides I was trying to help some kids with math at the moment...and sometimes she's just gotta learn to cool her jets.

She understood that to mean, "Sure! You can have an apple if you get it for yourself!"

We were having translation problems, obviously.

Anyway, a few minutes later she showed up in the music room (where Alexander, Zoë, and I were knee-deep in math problems) holding a little saucepan filled with apples (three apples, to be precise) and brandishing a knife!

"I need someone to cut these!" she sang out. 

I looked up and was like, "WHAT?! WHOA! Let's just...take that...and...what are you doing?"

"Getting apples ready for lunch! I can't find the apple cutter."

"Well, you're not supposed to cut apples without help yet! And you're never supposed to walk around the house carrying a knife!"

Seconds later Andrew came screeching around the corner yelling, "Where's Phoebe?!"

"She's right here," I said. 

"She has a knife!" he said.

"I know," I said, holding up the knife. "I have it now."

"She was jabbing it under the bathroom door, asking me to cut apples for her!" he said.

I held up the saucepan filled with apples. 

We had a little conversation on knife safety and how even if we can find creative ways to reach and retrieve sharp cutting objects...it doesn't mean that we should implement such creativity. 

Sometimes, as I mentioned earlier, we just need to cool our jets and exercise a little patience.

Here's Rachel working on her little pumpkin:

She is so photogenic.

Here's Benjamin and Zoë making progress on their pumpkin:

And Miriam and Alexander:

I already posted our finished products when I wrote about Halloween, so I won't post them here, but they turned out well enough. Typically we puree our pumpkins on Halloween evening but...let me tell you...we've had so many big projects this week. 

I had to put together a conference proposal. And I had to film a screencast for class. 

Andrew has been putting together a website to show the election results for Idaho. 

Rachel's been busy with her classes as well.

And so...the pumpkins sat out all night...which was fine, but I didn't really want to puree them after that because it's been so warm (had it been colder, I very well may have). Instead we used them to help decorate our trunk for the trunk-or-treat and then smashed them and threw the remains in our garden. 

We have a couple of other pumpkins that we didn't carve, which we'll bake and puree for some delicious homemade pumpkin pie (and soup and bread and...) later this month (and year).