Last week it suddenly occurred to me that Halloween was coming up fast, and there were only real spiders cover our doors with cobwebs. On the way home from Sunday school last Sunday, David asked if we could get and carve pumpkins that day. I said yes. Rose asked if we could invite the cousins over to join us. I said yes. Then I went and took a nap and sort of failed to realize our time crunch. My goal with an activity like pumpkin carving is to use up the three hours the kids might otherwise spend rattling around the house and annoying each other. But, by the time I was back on duty, we had 1.25 hours to find and carve the pumpkins.

Speed pumpkin buying. We went to Ken's, the cute store down the street, but they only had one box of pumpkins and it was too deep to see in or for me to safely lift out. So, we raced to Safeway, the ugly mainstream grocery store with bad parking, slow check-out, and a very scary parking lot. I often tell the kids to be careful in parking lots in kind of a pro forma way like it's generally a good habit; here, I thought I was going to get hit, let alone them. We got our pumpkins with very little analysis. Again, I think pumpkin buying should lend itself to many aesthetic decisions. Not this year.

Miriam and Ariana, the cousins, had already been dropped off at our house by the time we got there. Scooping, designing, and carving went well. They are all, including David, old enough to do most of it themselves, especially because we have these cool pumpkin carving knives. I remember having a lot of angst over what my pumpkin should look like, but they seemed to make decisions in a relaxed fashion.

We didn't finish in 1.25 hours. I took Rose and Miriam off to dance class, and John supervised, and then John and I went off to dance class and Mom supervised. Halloween activity take one, done.