Rock-O-Lanterns

One tradition that I never really did as a kid and one that I don't do with my boys is carving pumpkins at Halloween time. It has never appealed to me. The last time we did it, here at home, was when Matthew was 3 years old and Zack was not even born yet.

HALLOWEEN 1996

Zack has had the opportunity at school to carve a pumpkin so at least he has experienced it. But this year I decided I wanted to carve pumpkins and I wanted the boys to enjoy doing it with me. So I took them to the store to pick out their pumpkins, (Pumpkin patches charge too much for pumpkins so we hit Smart and Final), and they really helped by being excited to do it. Zack had more interest in it but Matthew went along with my whim just to please me.
So I purchased the pumpkin carving kit, complete with scary patterns to follow and I had already picked out some that would be cool. But little did I know that the boys had their own ideas for their pumpkins and they designed their own pattern. Whatever!!
We had a great time cleaning out the pumpkins, nice and slimy and scraping the sides. Matthew was not really into this part so Zack and I handled the pumpkin guts.
We even saved the seeds so that we could roast them later. (By the way....the roasted pumpkin seeds were delicious---YUM!) To say the least it was pretty fun and not too messy. The boys were excited at how they turned out:)
We did not end up with your typical jack-o-lanterns........Zack made his the symbol for the band Blink 182 and Matthew did the name of his band on his pumpkin. So that is why I have appropriately named them our Rock-O-Lanterns!