He says it’s tradition.  I maintain that we are intelligent enough and creative enough to come up with better traditions…

I wanted a print of Seraphina’s hand for her baby book.  And I thought if it went well we’d do a print on her pumpkin as well.  Conventional wisdom is to try to get a baby’s hand print while they are sleeping.  I set everything up, down to putting her to sleep on a towel and rolling her sleeve up before she drifted off.  And of course she woke as soon as we attempted it.  squish, squish…green paint ooooozing.  She laughed when we rubbed it off and laughed when we painted more on.  Instead of hand prints, we got grab prints, and one smeared little foot mark.

Last year we grew our own Jack ‘O Lanterns.  This year I prioritized using that space for edibles.  Apparently my children have very expensive taste in pumpkins.  I’m planning on finding room for big pumpkins again next year! (we did grow lots of pie pumpkins this year and they are amazingly delicious)  We saved seeds from these as we carved, some to roast and some to plant.  I think we’ll try growing them around the edges of Sunflower Field.  That’s what we call our wiffle ball field, with the wall of sunflowers marking the edge.

There was so much flesh leftover from these big beasts that I made a batch of pumpkin butter.  We had a few warm nights where we huddled together under sleeping bags on the porch and read bedtime stories by flashlight and the glow of jack o’ lanterns.