Pumpkins

Whenever I think of October, the first thing I think of is pumpkins. I love carving them, I LOVE pumpkin bread, and I love pumpkin seeds. Come to think of it, pumpkins remind me of November as well. Mmmm... pumpkin pie...

Like I said in my last post, when the fam was all up, we made our way to the muddiest, stankiest, crowdiest pumpkin patch we could find! Luckily it was close, so at least we didn't drive too far to get stuck in the mud. The pumpkin patch is always a great place to get pictures - I love the bright orange background and a cute little niece or nephew in the picture.


At the beginning of the day, Paxton was doing great - Ali is always a little cheeser when she's in front of the camera. She hasn't quite figured out the normal smile to use when taking pictures. However, the sun kept getting in Pax's eyes, and pretty soon he was totally done taking pictures.






Ali was walking in the mud, and all of a sudden I see her laughing and running toward me - her shoe totally got stuck in the mud, so we had to take her sock off and she sported this look the rest of the time.


We're pretty darn cute.


I love these girls, and they put up with me always taking these kinds of over the shoulder pictures, even though their mom has an awesome camera!


I just sat here for about 5 minutes trying to figure out how to type the "cat call whistle" sound. Impossible. Please do that out loud while looking at this picture of this foxy lady and I.

The grandparents wanted a chance to take a picture with all the grandkids at the Patch (we missed you Max!) and I couldn't choose the best one. Check out this slideshow, and please take note of a few things - Paxton's lack of smile and general meltdown, and Madi's awesome poses! Actually, all the kids are hilarious, check it out:



Once we were finished with the Pumpkin Patch, and after our crazy ordeal of getting in the car and out of the pumpkin patch, we headed home. Later that night, we carved our pumpkins in the family room. The 3 youngest kids (Gabi, Pax and Ali) were so fun to watch - they really only needed some help carving the top of their pumpkin, and taking out the remaining guts, but they carved all of their pumpkins on their own!


Ali was a little excited about the whole process - she loved getting her hands dirty!


Like mother, like daughter... :)


My pumpkin took forever to carve, since I decided to polka dot the entire thing. I broke 2 melon ballers in the process, thank goodness my mom had 3!


Our pumpkins turned out awesome!


Denise's pumpkin - she did another carving on the other side of a happy face, I don't know how I missed getting that picture - sorry Nisers.


Ali had the tiniest pumpkin, and it had the most seeds in side of it. How cute is that crooked smile?!?


Paxton finished his pumpkin pretty early, and didn't like that the eye on the right was smaller than the eye on the left, so he fixed it. He loved it, even though the eye on the right ended up being much bigger than the eye on the left!


Jon was a trooper and was the roving pumpkin helper - any of the kids that needed a hand, Jon was there! He didn't get to pick out his pumpkin since he wasn't at the patch, but Jen and Livi got him a good one.


Jen got a warty pumpkin from the stand in the front of the patch. Apparently they needed a sign that said "Thick pumpkins that no knife can penetrate!" Holy cow, it was so hard to carve hers.


Madi used a template out of the book, and it was so hard - she and I were the last two carving, and I think she wanted to switch halfway through, if she could have! I still think it turned out good!


Mom & Jean bought a pumpkin, but neither really felt like carving, so Madi drew the Mickey Mouse on there, and Jon carved it when he was done with his pumpkin.


Livi had an awesome pumpkin - long and skinny, just like Liv! Loved the face!


Gabi got an awesome green pumpkin, and her carved face was super cute. I don't think her pumpkin lasted very long - her lid started to rot the next day!


The melon baller killer! I tried to get inspired by the big zit on the top of my pumpkin, but when I looked in Jen's Martha Stewart magazine, I loved the polka dots!

When I got home from Washington, Conor and I went out to get some pumpkins. We were hoping that if we had pumpkins in front of our doorstep, that kids in our complex would be more likely to trick-or-treat at our door! Guess how well that worked - ZERO trick-or-treaters...

Anyway, our pumpkins turned out well. Conor loves to do faces on his, so he got straight to work once his was de-gunked. I wanted to do a Seahawks pumpkin to represent, but the template was a little too hard for me. Then I remembered the Office episode from the day before, and couldn't pass up making a pumpkin inspired by Jim Halpert's Halloween costume.