Carving Pumpkins

So I thought it would be fun to have some friends over and have a massive pumpkin carving party. We have never carved pumpkins with Kaeden. In fact, I realized that Jeff and I had never carved pumpkins as a married couple. Yep, we are lame. We always do the pumpkin patch thing, but never get around to actually carving them.

This year, we hadn't even done the pumpkin patch thing. Time was wasting away, and I figured that if we wanted to carve pumpkins tonight, I was just going to have to suck it up and grab some pumpkins at the store. Talk about ruining the Fall/Halloween mood.

Don't worry though. I totally tried to fake the pumpkin patch spirit while picking out pumpkins at Macey's. Customers walking into the store probably thought I was a bit crazy.  The boys were a bit confused too.

I decided to run to Macey's because while Kaeden was getting his haircut a few doors down, I saw a truck pull up and start unloading pumpkins.  I figured we get the pick of the patch, and have some fun pumpkins to carve.

Only problem....there were too many awesome pumpkins.  They all had way cool knobby stems, and Kaeden just kept pulling one out after another yelling, "Look at this one mom. This one is AWESOME!".

So.... we bought them all.

I was so nervous going to the check out stand for fear that I had like $50 worth of pumpkins in my overflowing cart.  Imagine my surprise when it rang up to $15.  Eight massive pumpkins for $15!!  On top of that, the checker is like, "So, you qualify for eight free two-liters of orange soda.  Do you really want all of those?"  Even though no one in our family particularly likes orange soda, it took me all of two seconds to be like, "Damn right I want all of them!  They are free!  Have you seen what you can do with them on Pinterest?!"  Funny enough, the teen boy checker was like, "Yeah!  I love Pinterest!"  Totally didn't see that one coming3

So we headed home, our friends arrived, and we got to carving pumpkins.

Jeff, Jordan, and I were really the only adults that attacked the endeavor of carving pumpkins.  So naturally it became a bit of a competition.

I was expecting big things out of Jeff.  He is very creative, and good using his hands with tools and doing precision cuts [because of his line of work], so I figured this would all present itself as one awesomely carved pumpkin.

Not so much.

In fact, his pumpkin left me so astounded that I blurted out, "Did you never carve pumpkins as a child?"  It's like he had no concept of the mechanics that went into a knife slicing through pumpkin flesh.  The thing was so hideous I didn't even bother with a picture.  Just imagine a few gaping holes, and then shavings that he re-glued back onto his pumpkin for a mustache and 5 o'clock shadow.  Yes.  It was THAT bad.

The man hard at work:

Meredith making him nervous because he wasn't sure if she was really going to kiss him.  Do you see the gaping holes that I speak of?  Believe it or not, that's an eye and a nose.

Jordan quietly worked on his pumpkin outside with the kids.  For whatever reason, they were all really interested in what he was doing.  And for whatever else reason, Jane is topless here.

While Jordan's pumpkin was not an abomination like Jeff's, it was just aaaaight.  Nothing that could hold a candle to my awesome pumpkin.

Although there was no official vote, it's easy to see that I was the clear winner.