Carving Pumpkins...better than smashing them

At about 4:30 or so Sunday afternoon, my friend, Erin, called me up to see if we wanted to go to a new park with her and her family. We decided that this being one of the last few nice evenings we were going to have, we joined them. Elijah was concerned that we weren't going to have time to carve our pumpkins, something he has been looking forward to since he requested it on the way to church. I assured him we would be fine, and then I convinced myself just the same. This park was different from other parks in our area in that it had a lot of interactive things to play on, most of them made of tires. Of all the things to do, however, the first thing Titus managed to play on (or in) was a mud puddle. He wasn't too thrilled to have found it though. He got out of it and was walking exaggerated cowboy style. You know, like a big kid who just peed his pants?!? It was quite funny!

This park had so many interactive stations, I guess you could call them. Here is the zip line which also had 2 stationary ropes next to it to play on. Of course, Levi quickly became Indiana Jones when he saw those.

This beam was hanging by chain on either side, so it was a balancing act to stay on and a great game to knock everyone off. I'll have to say, either I had the best balance of everyone there, or else I just have the most "balancing options" to put it kindly. Catch my drift? Either way, I got quite the workout of my legs getting everyone to fall off.

This is another balancing station. The faster you run around, the harder it is to stay balanced.

Of course Elijah found a better use for it! Can we say belly flop?

This park is in the back of a subdivision and has access to the rails to trails that we occasionally ride. If ever we have the stamina, I'd like to make a day of it. They had a pavilion there, a basketball court, a baseball field and, unfortunately, thousands of mosquitoes. There was a climbing tower of tires, a sand box, a giant race car, a stage, a slide playhouse and I'm sure more. I just don't remember it all. Oh yeah, one more thing. There was this bunch of tires stuck together at the sides making a web of sorts that was hanging in the middle of 3 poles (tires parallel to the ground) so that when you got on, it was another kind of a ride or game to knock people off. Very wiggly it was. I also knocked Tim off of that, though he tried in vain to get me. I kindly suggested that if I were to fall off, I was sure to break something, and that would land me in the hospital because I'm too old to break things and he'd have to be Mr Mom for a while. We didn't play that game too much longer.

We left at dusk to go home to take baths. We all wreaked of OFF. When we were all done, we carved our Apple Orchard pumpkins!!! I purchased a couple of those carving kits at the thrift store for 75% off (they ended up being a whopping$.40) and so the kids chose designs that they wanted to cut out. They found out rather quickly that they didn't so much like this family fun.
Levi put on the plastic skeleton gloves. I have never seen someone use gloves to gut a pumpkin, least of all a little boy, but there's always a first.
Elijah was a bit timid at first but quickly turned to thinking it was cool. As you can see, Eden thought it was stinky and ended up leaving the kitchen on account of the bad smell.
It took 2 or 3 tries with the carving tools to find out that the kids weren't able to use them properly and so they passed them off to mommy and daddy. I did the spider and Tim did the bat. It was fun! We put tea lights in the bottoms and lit them up.
Turn out the lights and we are good to go. We let the boys carry their pumpkins outside to put them on the porch and then it was bedtime. What a fun night. Now, I hope we weren't so anxious to carve these pumpkins that they wilt and rot before Halloween.