Pumpkin Carving: A Self-Inflicted Holiday

Fall: it's one of my favorite times of the year, ranked just behind the holiday season. With fall comes loads of fun things, enter Pumpkin Carving. As kids, my sister and I would beg my parents to buy these "pumpkin carving kits", which included exactly one terrible serrated knife fit for a kindergartner. It took forever to try to carve out anything and inevitably, my father would just end up doing it with a real knife, which made this his favorite night of the year (I sincerely hope you sense the sarcasm).

Now that I have kids, this is a night I have chosen to make "fun" as well. Today marks two days from Halloween, so we decided to do this tonight. My kids thought it was a blast, but what exactly did they do?

House of Chong Pumpkin Carving Steps:

1. Jae prepped the pumpkins and kitchen table (maybe with a smidge of help from Bennett... maybe)
2. Jae drew the pictures (with direction from our kids)
3. Jae gutted the pumpkins (Bennett put his hand in once and quickly realized that the inside of a pumpkin feels kind of gross)
4. Jae carved the pumpkins

As you can see, this brings my kids' total involvement to "supervising", and just like my childhood, the Dad (Jae) ended up pretty much doing it all. 

Bennett and Mila Providing Creative Direction:

Bennett Refusing to Gut the Pumpkin. In his words, "yuck":

Trying to get the little nuggets to sit still for a photo with "their" pumpkins:

Scary noises (Kai with the assist in the background):