Pumpkin Time

This week we carved our pumpkins.  This is always a big process in our home because we have four kids, non of whom are able to carve their own pumpkins.  But all of whom want their own pumpkin carved.

Therefore, Josh and I end up carving six pumpkins over the course of the evening.

First we make our way to a local farm to buy the cheapest an best pumpkins in town.

If you live in/near Missoula and don't know about Benson's Farm you are missing out!

Their pumpkins are reasonably priced. Maddie got the biggest one, she needed her sister's help to carry it, and it only cost $6.  Most of our other pumpkins were around $2 or less.

Plus the kids get the wonderful experience of running around in the greenhouse finding their perfect pumpkin.

Finding pumpkins is always such fun.

Each kid pick out about three pumpkins before they settle on their final one.

I'm always the last one to pick out my pumpkin because I'm too busy taking pictures and helping the kiddos.

Josh got anxious for me to get my perfect pumpkin so he confiscated my camera.  It worked, found my pumpkin... as you can see I was pretty thrilled!

With pumpkins in hand we were ready to carve.

Everything get's laid out on the table and then it's a mad rush of cutting off tops, cleaning out the guts, playing with the guts,

getting pumpkin seeds all over, separating seeds from guts,

and finally we are to designing the faces.

Here Jo is explaining what kind of face he wants his pumpkin to have,

and inspecting Dad's work.

Not to brag or anything, but this year I think we set a personal record of how quickly we carved pumpkin and how smoothly it went.

And I think they turned out pretty good.  From left to right here are the artist of each pumpkin: Danica, Maddie, Joshie, Gracie, Jess, Josh.  Can you guess what each one is?

Here they are adorning our porch.  So cute!  Here's the breakdown of artistic pumpkin inspirtation:
Danica: Gus (our dog)
Maddie: traditional Jack-O-Latern
Joshie: the "scary face" he makes himself
Gracie: a bear
Jess: western sheriff
Josh: ninja (I personally think he was just tired of carving pumpkins.  Pretty clever huh?!)

Hope you all are having a great Fall so far!

Joshie's Field Trip

The other week Joshie had his first pre-school field trip.

They went to an apple orchard.

They made apple juice.

And apple sauce from scratch.

Jo ate and drank a lot of both.

There was also a hay ride through the orchard.

Joshie had a blast.  His first field trip was a complete success!

Hunting with Dad

A couple weeks back Josh and Jo went hunting.

Jo cannot wait until he can actually shoot a real gun and hunt game himself.

But for now he's more than happy to camo up and carry is toy rifle.

His legs are short, but he somehow keeps up with his Dad on the long hunting hikes.

Jo also insist on taking a backpack like his Dad.

I don't know what he puts in it, but it's always strapped on when he goes hunting.

There are going to be a lifetime of these kind of shots (& I mean photographic shots).