Pumpkin Boy

When Wesley was a baby, we used to call him "Wesley Micah Pumpkin Boy Gentala".  How's that for a nick name...haha.  Sometimes, it was just "Wesley Pumpkin Boy" or shortened even more to "Pumpkin"...pronounced more like "punkin" than "pumpkin".  I can't even remember how this nickname started but it was just one of those things that stuck.  Even some of our close friends would call him "Wesley Pumpkin".  Then, when he was about three years old, he was convinced that his name really WAS Pumpkin!  Haha...how cute is that:)  He now refuses to let us call him Pumpkin.  But, every once in a while we do it anyway just out of nostalgia...and to listed to his cute little four year old voice explain that his name really ISN'T Pumpkin:)

I was remembering this Sunday afternoon as we had our "Sabbath Fun". 

We decided to buy six pumpkins to carve and let each one of the kids design their own.  We obviously didn't need to buy one for either of the babies as they would NOT be carving a pumpkin but something made me get them each one anyway.

So, we began this afternoon of fun and mess.  The first thing that I did was put both babies down for a nap...haha.  Then, I had the older four kids draw on a piece of paper the face that they eventually wanted on their pumpkin.  This was really a tough step for some of them as they just wanted to dive in with the chopping:)  But, I thought it would be a great time to practice patience and self-control.  So, they each drew out a face to carve.

Next, we cut open the pumpkins and let them each clean out the insides...reserving the seeds for a cooking project and snack later...yum!
Let the cutting begin!

 

We cut the bottoms off first (Peter's idea).  This really helped to make the pumpkins more stable and stand up well.  I had always cut the tops off first but then they would roll sideways...unless you picked the perfect flat bottom pumpkin (which is hard to do when you are choosing six pumpkins with six monkeys with you).

 

It was quite a messy undertaking and even the boys were a little grossed out by the stringy, sticky mess.

Haha.  I love that priceless expression.

This was really NOT Abby's favorite part:)

After cleaning out the pumpkins they could either draw the face on the pumpkin or just try to cut like the picture that they had made.  This was SO much fun!  It just really isn't that often that we let them all have sharp objects and chop away at things.  Ha!

  It's neat to see how each unique personality is exemplified on the face of the little pumpkin that he/she carved.  Here are a few shots of the final pumpkins.

This was a great project that brought some family fun into our Sabbath.

Now to hide the carving instruments so that nothing else gets carved:)

Here are the pumpkins together.  Peter and I will carve the large pumpkin and hopefully get around to carving faces on the two little pumpkins for Seth and Ransom.