Jack-o-lanterns

For Kendall's birthday we picked all those pumpkins, so of course, we needed to carve them. Or, in Kendall's case, paint them.

And paint them some more. Until the final product looked like they had been in a paintball fight.

Cassidy joined in on the fun for a short time, but as decorating pumpkins in taxing work, she decided napping would better serve her. The pumpkins were also bigger than her. And a whole lot heavier.

Nate went right to work on carving and picked out a fairly intricate design. I had never carved a pumpkin (I know, right? Who doesn't carve pumpkins?) so I hung back a bit. I picked simple patterns and went to work on the pumpkin. Mine did not turn out nearly as nice as Nate's masterpiece, but I thought it was cool. So did the squirrels once we put it outside.

Nate's, I have to say was awesome. It was a lot more complicated then you would think to carve that pumpkin, and took him a good 3 hours, but it was worth it. I fought the squirrels off his pumpkin daily for a week just to try to keep it intact for Halloween.

Yep, not scary, but Bert and Ernie made a darn cool pumpkin.

We only lit them up once, but got a cool picture before we put them out in the elements (by elements I mean put them out for the squirrels to eat).

Why do I keep mentioning squirrels? Because these pumpkins were on the balcony, and every day I would come into the living room to a squirrel chewing on a pumpkin and staring at me. Those squirrels we taunting me. I even had once on the dining room window, knocking to come in. Chasing them off wouldn't even work, they just stood there and stared. Kendall loved the squirrels and would not only talk to them, but invite them to stick around and have some pumpkin. I was not amused.

As cool as the pumpkins were, I was happy when we threw them out and got rid of our squirrely visitors.