The Jack-O'-Lantern Adventure

Pumpkin picking. It's one of my favorite things to do with my kids. We have a great place that we go to every year that not only lets us pick pumpkins, it lets the kids run around and play on spooky playgrounds, bounce in a cool bounce house, eat junk food, enjoy a petting zoo, and of course, a kick ass hayride!

This is only my son's second Halloween, so it's always been my daughter getting to have most of the fun, and she always been content on picking a small pumpkin and getting to paint it at the pumpkin patch. Then the thing I've been dreading for some time had finally happened: One of her little friends at school boasted how her daddy was going to buy her the biggest pumpkin he could find and "carve a jack-in-the-lantren," as my daughter told me. She then put on an Oscar-worthy performance and asked me if we could do the same. Who told her to make friends at school, anyway?

Have you ever carved a pumpkin before? I hadn't. This was my first time ever, and I have to say, after all the horror stories (fitting, right?) I read about how long it takes and how annoying it is, it wasn't that bad. The part that took the longest was scooping out all of the seeds and shit.

Let's talk about the seeds and shit for a second. That shit is NASTY! Stringy, goopy, sticky, straight up gangsta shit these pumpkins have in 'em. I spent over an hour scooping and scraping every crevice to get it all out, and I'm not ashamed to admit, I threw out quite a few expletives along the way. I did not enjoy that part. You know who did though? My 4 year old. She had her hands digging, squishing, and smooshing that shit for HOURS. All the scraping and cursing was worth it to see her have so much fun.

Next: Drawing a carving the face. Since it was my first time, I kept it simple: 2 upside down triangle eyes, triangle nose, and mouth with a few teeth. Why try something fancy? I'm not auditioning for a spot on Halloween Wars for fuck's sake. It actually was pretty easy. I'm not a great artist by any means, but we're talking triangles people. Pretty hard to fuck up.

In the end, once everything was carved, cleaned up and displayed (OUTSIDE), it was all worth it just to see my kids' faces when I took them out later that night and stuck a candle in that bastard. It's not the prettiest jack-o'-lantern, but it's ours, and we love him.

Now here is the hardest part of all: eventually needing to explain to my daughter who ate her jack-o'-lantern and why.