The Carving Of The Pumpkins.

As each new week begins one of the things that I look forward to is our family home evening. The older the kids gets, and the older I get I feel that it is even more crucial to keep up family home evening. Granted Jon and I didn't have our own family home evenings as a couple when we were newlyweds, nor for the first five years of our marriage! It wasn't until I got sealed in the temple with Jon and our girls is when we seriously committed to have FHE every week no matter what. No matter how older the girls got, and no matter how big our family gets we will have always continued to have FHE. There have been days in the past when we'd have it on Sunday rather than monday only because Jon worked Monday nights, but hey...at least we still prepared for it! 

This past week has been so crazy! Heck the whole month of October has been crazy. Crazy in a sense of juggling life as a mother, wife, friend, neighbor, daughter, daughter-in-law, and sister in the church can make someone nuts!! Nonetheless amidst all the many hats I wear I've managed to contain my composure in not worrying about the little things, and to strive to have faith in not worrying too much about the big things!! Luckily we have three kids still left at home who reassure me that life is good, that each day is new, and that every Monday brings a new week to do better regardless of any circumstance. It's the week of Halloween for crying out loud, and shouldn't we be having fun instead of sweating the small stuff, in trying to forget the bad stuff for just that one day, and have fun!  

Well...this week we did just that! 

We picked pumpkins this past weekend, and for our FHE this past Monday we finally carved them!! Finally! Better late in October than never right? The last time we carved pumpkins was like three years ago!! We did paint pumpkins last year, but it had been a while since we carved any, and so I'm glad we got to do that this year! 

You'd think the girls would be the ones to not want to get their hands dirty, but instead it was this little guy. Such a goof. I hope that as he gets older he'll want to get his hands dirty! Papa helped him...for now! 

This was also Noah's first time carving a pumpkin, and all he did was carve. Carve, carve, carve. He carved, and drew the face of how he wanted his pumpkin to look like with the help of papa.

As usual Chelsea went to town with her little 'kin gutting and scraping him to the core!

We also made popcorn balls for our trunk or treat we had our church this past week. Another tradition that we have kept up for the past eight years! Noah and Chelsea made them this year, and they had too much fun! 

^^^ Don't worry trunk or treaters...their hands are clean! ^^^ 

This year for the first time instead of throwing away the pumpkin seeds we decided to roast them. We baked them and seasoned them with chili, garlic powder, cumin, seasoning salt, sugar and cinnamon! It was delish! 

Reason why you don't see Lexie in any of these pictures is because she was doing homework. I know...this was our time spent as a family, but at least she helped dad as to what she wanted carved on her pumpkin that best described her. Even though this was our FHE for the week it was more of a "fun night" than an actual "spiritual" night. Our lesson was on building traditions, and continuing to keep them in hopes on passing them on down to our posterity. 

The end result of the carving of the pumpkins...

Ta-da! Can you tell whose is whose? The one with the music notes & tennis ball is Lexie's, and the smallest one is Noah's. And the one with the very sharp teeth...is Chelsea! I think they all did a good job with carving their pumpkins! 

***It's the day before Halloween...have you carved your pumpkins yet?