Pumpkin Carving and Painting

So that we would have a jack o' lantern for Halloween (one of our family traditions), we (meaning Jayze) carved a pumpkin the night before for our FHE activity. 

While I made the FHE treat (yummy, healthy no bake cookies), Jayze drew out some samples for Aidan to choose from. Aidan didn't like the scary ones, so we went with a "silly" one this year. 

Jayze did a great job. The boys were both fascinated and grossed out by the pumpkin guts. Aidan touched them once and then said, "I'm good!" Kimball just wanted to "eat" out of it every time he thought we weren't looking. 

When Jayze finished carving it, he put a red light inside and turned off all of our apartment lights. Then we sat on the couch, munched on cookies, and watched our boys' delight. Kimball kept running back and forth with his cheesy smile and bursts of laughter, and they both kept sticking their arms through the jack o' lantern's (whom we affectionately named "Fred") mouth.

When it was time to go to bed, we set Fred on the table. In the morning he ate breakfast with Aidan and then watched him play. That night (Halloween!) we set him outside our front door for him to greet our guests (a family in our ward) as they walked up the stairs to our Halloween party. 

Tip: If you want to get ahead of the game, do a Thanksgiving craft on Halloween. We thought about dressing up in our costumes again and hitting up a free, community trunk or treat, but decided to host a very small and simple Halloween party instead. My friend sent me an idea for a craft, and so we teamed up with gathering supplies and each family painted a "Thankful" pumpkin (my first time painting a pumpkin!). 

After our friends left and we were cleaning up before bed, we asked Aidan what his favorite part of the day was. He said, "Putting my hand on the red paint and then on the pumpkin!"

I think that was my favorite part of the day, too.