Leaves and a Pumpkin

It seems strange to me that just a couple of days ago we had several days of 70 degree weather...and today it's been snowing all day! I'm glad the cold weather held off long enough to wrap up Halloween festivities. We only got in one good afternoon of playing outside in the autumn leaves, but it was a beautiful day! Noah especially loved it.

However, Noah didn't seem to notice when Lincoln wasn't particularly loving it...

Sorry, buddy.

I got a kick out of watching the two of them crunch around in the leaves...

...but it didn't last long before I had to rescue poor Lincoln - and not just from a teasing older brother, but we're just finding out that he's got lots of environmental allergies too. We had to take him in for a good bath right after our backyard adventure, but the red eyes, runny nose & sneezing continued for a few hours.

The grand finale of the afternoon was carving our pumpkin though!

...but, of course, a few pictures with the pumpkin before it makes its jack-o-lantern transformation.




Mark was the master creator of the jack-0-lantern. Here are the tools we used this year, and they worked quite nicely actually.

Noah giving it a try.

I have yet to be able to get a very good shot of Lincoln standing. He can stand for a minute or two like this now, and he likes to put his hands up in the air and squeal and laugh as if he is so delighted with himself (I'm sure he is!). Most of the time he'll clap for himself and look around to see if anybody is watching too. It's so cute. I'm sure that I'll manage to get a better picture at some point, but here's this one for now...


Noah was quite intrigued with the whole pumpkin carving thing and asked lots of questions. He really got into Halloween this year -witches, skeletons, ghosts, and "scary pumpkins" (aka jack-o-lanterns). Here he is peering in to see what the inside of the pumpkin looks like as Mark pulls the lid off.

He was not at all interested in helping to scoop out the guts though. I thought that he'd have a hay-day with that, and that he'd be throwing stuff everywhere outside. Nope. Wouldn't even touch it. Here's a really short clip:


Same story with Lincoln. I'd try to take his hand and help him touch the squishy pumpkin guts, and he'd just pull his hand away and look at me like I was crazy. Come on, guys! I thought all boys loved eweee, gooey, slimey stuff? Maybe next year?

Lincoln was pretty interested in the face of the Jack-O-Lantern once it was done, in fact he kept kissing (or, rather - sucking on) the inner part of the eye. Funny kid.

Mark did a really great job with his creation. I loved it! He even took the time to edge out a border around the lid, and add our names to the top!

Ta-da!
I wish that I had remembered to get a picture of it lit up on Halloween night. I loved how the light glowed softy through our names, and flickered brightly though the wide smile! Nicely done, babe!