Happy October 31st!

Pumpkins have been carved. The Spud helped make a cute spider while the Beast insisted on carving his own "bat house." The Drama Queen drew out instructions for her pumpkin, and Daddy kindly did the carving for her.

Avast me hearties! These scalliwags had fun at the fall festival last night.

Our future veterinarian paused to pose before insisting that we make her a surgical mask to wear "in case she had to operate on her puppy."

Even Little Sprout got dressed up as the sweet little pumpkin she is! And her momma posed as a pumpkin smuggler.

The Beast's costume got double duty today since he got to wear it to preschool today! It's been a weekend of silly fun and family memories. Despite being homebound today due to the modified bed rest, I am doing my best to make it an exciting day for the kids. They are eating their lunch of ghost toast, carrot jack'o'lanterns, and hairy hotdogs now. . .

and linking up with:

The Pumpkin Mania Continues

Now that we had our pumpkins from the patch, it was time to make them worthy of standing on our front porch.

The Spud was especially excited to be allowed to use all the interesting tools for this activity. The ice cream scoop was definitely his favorite.

The Beast could not wait to open his pumpkin and get all the guts out; we caught him stabbing his pumpkin repeatedly with his carving tool.

The Drama Queen was quite intent on carving her own this year; and she did admirably well with little help from Daddy.

What can I say? We really get into our pumpkin carving around here!

The next day, we hosted a pumpkin party for our friends from our Faith and Family Sunday School class. The table was covered with dozens of pumpkins, all blank canvasses for the party guests. Caramel apples, kettle corn, and pumpkin cookies waited in the kitchen to be served along with an assortment of apple cider and soda pop.

Once the guests heard there would be prizes for the pumpkin carving, they jumped right in. Everyone chatted away while they busily used knives, measuring cups, spoons, scrapers, and. . .

. . . even a power drill. It takes all kinds.

For the younger guests, an assortment of toys was waiting in the boys' room as well as our new Toss-Across game. Note here that the Drama Queen has already set herself up for the perfect win. :)

Many of the guests enjoyed Mario Kart on the Wii. Yes, that is popcorn all over my carpet.

I finally got a chance to carve a pumpkin too. (with a little helper)

The boys discovered how fun it was to use the power drill to make various holes in the pumpkins. One boy put so many holes in his pumpkin I was afraid the whole pumpkin would fall apart.

All in all, after the bags and bags of pumpkin guts and debris were cleared away and the last guest finally went home, I realized that I had thoroughly enjoyed myself. Pumpkins are fun, but friends are the best!