The Carvers

Tonight we had some good quality family time. We've had a busy week so I thought it would be nice to have a relaxing evening at home. Dinner, not takeout or leftovers or PB&J, but something I had actually cooked tonight. Of course that was just for Matt and me, the kids just ate chicken nuggets! After dinner we carved pumpkins and baked Halloween cookies. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? What it looked like was this....

Ella was so worked up she couldn't sit still during dinner. She galloped back and forth between the kitchen and the family room all excited about a project that her and Matt had been working on earlier. I was barely able to get her to sit and eat. Catherine was fine, she decided she liked ketchup and spent most of the meal dipping and licking - probably a ratio of 10 dips to one nugget. After Ella shoved a few nuggets in her mouth we went outside to "pick" her pumpkin out of the four lined up on the porch. Of course, she wanted the biggest one. Matt was a little sad because he wanted the biggest one. But he agreed to share it with her. So we got all set up at the kitchen table and after cutting the top off, prepared to scoop. I had the video camera going to catch Ella's first time cleaning out a pumpkin. It was eventful. I think she touched one seed. We were able to get her to put her hand in the pumpkin to find a piece of candy we hid. Then she wanted to use a spoon - she said the pumpkin was yucky and cold. I don't know where she gets that. I am not a wuss around her. I regularly kill the dreaded stink bugs that prowl around her room without flinching (me, not the bugs - I imagine they might flinch a bit when I squash them) and only freak out when one lands on me (who wouldn't?). I clean up the gross messes that inevitably come with having young kids. Matt actually does all of the above and deals with the worst of the worst (no need to mention). But for some reason Ella can't help scoop out a pumpkin - too icky for her.

That pretty much ended her pumpkin experience. The next 1/2 hour or so was Matt trying to carve the pumpkin while I was trying to distract Ella by involving her in cookie making. The cookie making which was peeling the pre-cut cookie dough off the little sheet of dough and plopping it on a baking sheet. I thought something that easy would be doable with Ella - but I didn't count on Catherine hanging on me, trying to poke her head through my knees and waiting until I look down at her and say "hello!!!" (she laughs hysterically at this) - it made the whole balance thing a bit more difficult. So our family night ended up being different than I thought. I'm not sure why I thought cookies and pumpkin carving would be great activities to a 3 year old and one year old.

Oh, and after Matt carved his pumpkin and wasn't happy with the results, I decided to give it a try. It's been years since I've carved a pumpkin and started to regret my design after a bit, but it worked Tonight I'll get a picture of both pumpkins and you can guess who did which one and which one is better!

Update: I didn't get a chance to post this until Sunday and I still don't have a picture - it's been a busy weekend. I worked a catering job yesterday and didn't get home until 2:30am. As I was guzzling diet Coke at 12:30am to stay alert I kept reminding myself, Christmas money, Christmas money! Needless to say, I haven't gotten outside to get pumpkin pictures....