The Family that Carves Together

Today was pumpkin carving day! We gathered all five pumpkins and all five Js around the kitchen table and set to work.

James and I started by cutting out the openings and, to my surprise, Josie rolled up her sleeves and dove right in to start pulling out the innards.  Jamie, on the other hand, poked one finger into the juicy insides and said, “Ewwww!” He doesn’t like getting his hands messy, which is pretty funny considering he’s 100% boy in all other aspects (so I guess that makes him 99.98% boy).

He spent the remainder of the time coloring on the pumpkins. I made sure he used a washable marker so that I could un-decorate the pumpkins for display afterwards. Josie helped us decide which pumpkin would have a happy face, which would have a scary face, and which would have a surprised face. The crowning moment was when we lit the candles and the kids got to admire the shiny orange glow of our jack-o-lantern family.

Of course, no family project is ever complete without at least one catastrophe. At one point I took a mid-carve break to get dinner started. On the menu was roasted chicken with stuffing and corn on the cob, so I set the oven to preheat while I prepared the bird in its pan. The sweet smell of raw pumpkin coming from the nearby kitchen table must have masked the stench of burning plastic, because I didn’t realize that I was cooking toys until I opened the oven to place the chicken inside. One of Jamie’s recent obsessions is playing in the oven. I’m sure you can connect the dots.

I was upset about losing a handful of play food pieces but at the same time the whole incident- which I’ve totally seen coming for at least a week, when I first found toys in the oven- brought a smile to my face because it reminds me of when I left a Care Bear toy in my dad’s broiler. By the time my parents discovered the source of that awful smell Sunshine Bear was little more than a yellow blob of icky goo and the entire house was filled with smoke.

But anyways, half an hour later James noticed that I had forgotten to restart the oven after scraping out all the melted plastic. Chalk it up to trying to do too much at one time. It all turned out in my favor though. James offered to order us Chinese food, so instead of having to clean a sink full of dishes I swept up all the pumpkin guts and seeds that had been scattered around the kitchen floor while the kids watched “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.”