The ONLY thing I like about Halloween.

I think I've told you guys this before - I really, really dislike Halloween.  As a kid, I didn't really like it.  Costumes are itchy and uncomfortable.  I don't really like candy that much. 

When I was a teacher, I hated it because the kids were all hopped up on a sugar high for a few days before and after Halloween itself.  It was just glorified babysitting for that whole week, really. 

As a mom, I'm still not a fan.  The kids beg to wear their costumes weeks before the actual holiday, and they are relentless.  So I eventually give in (pick your battles, as they say).  And then they inevitably rip their costumes or lose parts of them, then freak out every time they lose a part of their costume.  They fight over who gets what trick-or-treat bucket.  And Gage usually refuses to wear part or all of his costume.  It's usually freakin' freezing on Halloween, and because Ben insists on being the one to answer the door for trick-or-treaters (he gets all dressed up in a scary and gory costume and gets the biggest kick out of scaring children - Halloween is is favorite holiday EVER), I get to walk around with the kids in subzero temperatures, basically going door-to-door begging people to give my kids free candy.

Just call me Scrooge.  Or, because it's Halloween, um....Booge.  Get it?  Boo?  Like a ghost says?  With a -ge at the end?

Yeah.

But.  There is one part of Halloween that I really like - carving pumpkins.  In my eyes, it's a chance to make art.  Pumpkin art.

We got to carving yesterday.  We got, like, the last six pumpkins at Albertson's.  They were completely out at Wal-Mart.  We should have gotten on that a long time ago.  Sadie's and my pumpkins had a couple of rotten spots.

We gave Sadie a lecture on not drawing a huge, intricate landscape scene on her pumpkin as she has done in years past.  I just can't carve stuff like that.  So she stuck with a simple portrait of a pretty girl - her specialty.  That, and drawing My Little Ponies. :)

Sade has a really bad cold.  She stayed home all day yesterday, and much to her dismay, felt way too gross to go to school again today.  But she stuffed a kleenex in her nose and sat up long enough to draw the design on her pumpkin before returning to the couch.  Here's her pretty girl (and the design Ben carved in Gage's pumpkin on the right):

Ben is usually wayyyyy into carving pumpkins.  We all go out and select pumpkins together a couple of weeks before, and he comes up with really amazing and creative ways to carve his pumpkins.  But he has a big architecture test today (you have to take ten huge tests and log in thousands of hours to get your actual architecture license), and he was stressed.  He did just the bare minimum.

Here's his:

A reflection on his nervousness, I'd say. :)

Micah said he wanted square eyes, square nose, square mouth on his pumpkin.  And then he kept beating up Gage and swearing (I can't claim responsibility for this one, because he kept taking the Lord's name in vain, and I seriously don't ever do that), so he got to go to bed early while Ben carved Micah's pumpkin.  Dylan's pumpkin is to the right:

Dylan's design is plaigaristic of Ben's design from several years ago.  Ben had gotten a huge pumpkin and then a mini pumpkin and had inserted the mini pumpkin into the big pumpkin's mouth. It was really cool.  I hope Ben doesn't have a big test on Halloween next year.  I miss my creative pumpkin carving man.

I really enjoy carving those designs from those pumpkin design books.  I did this one this year:

I'm such a dork.  For some reason, Ben has always cut the tops off the pumpkins, and I've always gutted them.  This year, I cut the tops off a couple of the pumpkins, and I did it wrong.  I guess you're supposed to cut the tops off at an angle, angling toward the center of the pumpkin.  I just cut straight up and down, and now my lids fall right into the gutted pumpkins.  So I had to stick toothpicks into the lids to keep them on top of the pumpkins.  You can see the toothpicks in the picture above.  Duh. 

Here are all of our punkins together:

Now that the fun part of Halloween is over, I have to prep myself to freeze my buns off tonight.

Bah humbug.