Pumpkins and Combines - Good Weekend:)

Hard to believe that Halloween is almost upon us!  We have a really busy upcoming weekend so we decided to carve pumpkins this past Saturday evening.  The kids were excited and I had to spend lots of time searching the internet for the perfect pumpkin carving pattern.  Ava looked through many, but finally decided on a My Little Pony pattern that we found.  Blaine wanted a tractor of course - not so easy to find.  But I found something that we could make work for a pumpkin.  So we started cutting and digging out guts.  But surprise - we found this seedling inside Blaine's pumpkin!  I am not a plant expert, but I don't know how a seed sprouts inside a dark pumpkin!!!  

We (OK - mostly John and I and Ava) carved the pumpkins with the chosen designs.  Blaine's attention span was too short to keep carving after getting the guts scooped out - he had tractors to play with.  But they were both excited when the pumpkins were done and we took them outside with lights in them.

 Here are the final products!  We shouldn't have started with some different, creative pumpkin patterns a couple of years ago.  Now both kids are not content with a simple jack-o-lantern face - we have to find something much more complicated!

 After our fun pumpkin carving evening, we spent Sunday afternoon riding in the combine, tractor and semi with Rick and Cara.  The kids knew that they were working a mile south of us and I decided to go down there and expend some of their pent up energy!  As always, they loved their time farming:)  Ava was thrilled to get to ride in the semi with Cara to the elevator, which was a new experience for her.  I eventually left to go home and mow the yard, leaving John to stop and pick the kids up on his way home from work that afternoon.  He had to be the bad guy making them get out of the tractor and combine to come home;) Made for a great weekend!