Pumpkins, hammers and cookie cutters

Tonight was our annual pumpkin carving night. The kids are always so excited for this night. Since it was Monday night this was also our Family Home Evening.

We realized during dinner that we hadn't brought the pumpkins in to warm up. The kids ran out and grabbed them to put in front of heater vents in the hope of warming them up. No such luck for the boys and their bigger pumpkins!

We tried out an new idea this year to help carve out pumpkins-COOKIE CUTTERS. The metals ones worked awesome!! We'll be looking for some new fun metal cookie cutters for next year.

Rebecca right away saw the pig cookie cutter and wanted that on her pumpkin. Since we live in Iowa a pig was the perfect thing to put on a pumpkin. She did a great job hammering the pumpkin cutter in for the nose and mouth. It was fun to watch her drive in and clean her pumpkin out without any hesitation this year.

Ammon got working on his first, but his had the most innards in it and took the looongest getting it cleaned out. He wanted a scary mouth, so he choose a spikey leaf cookie cutter. He made lots of leaf shapes joined together. Dad the dentist came to the rescue with a chisel to knock the "teeth" out of his pumpkin.

Simeon had the biggest pumpkin with very thick flesh. That made it harder to use the cookie cutters. We found out the hard-breaking-the-pumpkin-kind-of-way that plastic cookie cutters do NOT work on the pumpkins very well. We ended up braking the areas between the letters on his name.
He so wanted his head to fit inside his pumpkin-but the whole was just a bit too small.

Corrine was a super scraper and got her pumpkin cleaned out the fastest. She wanted an IOWA mouth for her pumpkin. She was also our super patient kiddo waiting for the hammer and letters. After seeing that Simeon's pumpkin was breaking from all the hammering on the plastic letters, she decided that her patience paid off and we used the letters as an outline and free handed her IOWA letters.

After we took their finished masterpieces outside and lit them, the kids ran through the giant leaf piles on the curb waiting to be vacuumed up this week. Thankfully the lights we got for the pumpkins have a 100 hour battery life because we left them on ALL NIGHT!! I hope anyone driving by in the night, enjoyed our jack-o-lanterns!

Pumpkin carving night is always so much fun and so messy-but absolutely SO worth it! 

Now we get to enjoy all those yummy roasted pumpkin seeds!

A Summer treat

This summer we had lots of new changes with bikes: Ammon mastered his bike, Mom got a new bike and Simeon moved up to a bigger gear bike. The bike Simeon is riding is the same one Johann rode as a youth!
Since Ammon has mastered his bike and I had a bike that could better handle the trailer, we have been able to go on family bike rides.
A few years back the city made paths connecting the different parks to eachother. The paths are wide and fairly flat which make them safe and fun to ride on. We like to go down Court Street, turn right onto Scott Blvd, then catch the beginning of the path there. We go through the "forest area" and go on a few streets to where the path starts back up in Court Hill park. We then take the path behind all the houses to 1st Avenue which is where the Snow Shack is.


Tonight we had a family home evening on following the rules, which led into our activity about learning how to safely ride your bike in the street, and hand signals. We talked about how you ride your bike in the street, how you show others when your turning then we practiced on our street. On our ride we headed out on the bigger roads with the kids getting some in the street practice. Depending on the kids some got to ride on the bigger roads, where others got to ride on the less used streets.
As part of our FHE we stopped to get a treat at the Snow Shack. We don't go there very often so this was a big thing for the kids. Rebecca feel asleep on the ride, so she missed out on the treat.


Tonight we met up with Grandma Smith and she rode to the snow shack with us. Grandpa was going to drive, but he never showed up. Grandma tried calling, but he wouldn't answer the phone. Finally she figured it out, he was locked out of the house without keys or a phone, so he also missed out on the treat!