First Halloweens

This week is Aidan's first Halloween. Unfortunately at almost 11 months, I think he'll have fun in his costume and seeing other kids in his costume, but he won't know what it's all about.

One thing he did learn about tonight was carving the pumpkins that we bought a few weeks ago. It SO brought me back to my childhood. But it made me realize what a pain in the arse it is to carve a HUGE one that's really thick. (keep your dirty minds to yourselves)

I had to do the carving on three pumpkins (to be honest, my first ones ever in 42 years of life); one for Aidan, one for MK and I and one for Wrigley, our beloved Golden Retriever. I have to fess up that my damn forearm is tired. We bought the special pumpkin carving tools, which I've now found out have the life expectancy of about 2 1/2 pumpkins, but they really worked well. I had to be careful with Aidan's (his was last) so that the tiny little saw didn't snap off. But because they are tiny, you need to do a lot of "sawing" and turning and well, it's best to say I was well over my pitch count.

I remembered to spread out newspaper on the kitchen table to catch all of the guts and any other spillage. I also remembered to put a notch-mark on the top so that I could line up the cap to the pumpkin again.

I tried to make Wrigley's look like a dog (it's sort of a dog), MK's and mine is a ghost and Aidan's is just your typical pumpkin look. Since Aidan now has 5 teeth (almost 6) in his mouth, I gave the pumpkin a few teeth, so he and the pumpkin have something to bond about. Here's a nice "spooky" picture with them lit up.

So Aidan and my first carvings were a hit with MK and Wrigley. Success at these little things I'll be doing for years. It's nights like these that make any horrible days one could have a distant memory.