Happy Halloween!

Obi-Wan, the ballerina girls, and Indiana Jones get ready to go trick or treating.

I used to be the Grinch Who Stole Halloween. Really and truly. When poor Cindy Lynn was a little girl it was like pulling teeth to get me to carve a pumpkin at Halloween. I just hated trying to hack that thing open with a paring knife, and I was always afraid that I was going to cut myself open instead of the pumpkin. I was also never wild about how my pumpkin turned out once I did carve it. An artist I am not. Fortunately for me and the rest of my kids some genius created pumpkin carving kits. Complete with easily transferable patterns and, more importantly, tools made just for carving a pumpkin. They look like little saws and littler saws, and at first we were a bit dubious. But only for a minute. As soon as I stuck one of those into a pumpkin and started sawing I was a believer. It was the dawning of a new era in pumpkin carving in our household. This year, however, we ran into a new problem. I purchased 4 massively large pumpkins, figuring that there was one for each of the little kids and Josh, but that Russ, Jason & I would need to help the little kids. I think by next year that will no longer be true, and everyone who wants to carve will have to have their own pumpkin. I know I didn't get enough carving time in this year--everyone was ok on their own! Here are this year's pumpkins.
Rachel's "Wolf Howling at Moon"

Jenna's "Spooky Ghost"

Jared's "Dragon in Flight"

Josh's "Trick or Treat"

Josh had the great idea this year of putting some dry ice in his pumpkin to make smoke come out of it. It probably would have worked better had I remembered to put the dry ice right into the freezer...instead of letting most of it evaporate on the counter. We did learn some valuable lessons, though, including that candles and dry ice are not very compatible. Next year we'll be ready to try it again.