I wish I could remember how many years now we’ve been participating in the local pumpkin carving contest. My grandmother got us started doing this several years ago, since it is held at the retirement village where she was living. Even though she is not there any more, we still love to participate in the contest.

The kids worked hard on their pumpkins: painting and carving and creating. Starting yesterday afternoon and going until about 11 a.m. today, we did almost nothing else besides our pumpkin project. Laura and I were up until after midnight last night working on our more detailed carvings. This morning the kids popped out of bed and got busy again. It was amusing to me to see Laura in her jammies and with her tossled hair, bending over her pumpkin working hard on the details.

After we delivered our pumpkin projects, we continued on our day wondering how our entries would fare. We headed to piano lessons and then the guitar lesson, and finally it was time to go to the evening event, where they would show the results of the contest, as well as have storytelling by my brother, and refreshments and goody bags.

Everyone had a wonderful time, lots of us won prizes, and we only misplaced one child. Fortunately, Amelia stayed calm after her whole family disappeared to the refreshment area, and twenty minutes later when we realized she wasn’t with us, Michael went and found her sitting patiently in the main lounge. Poor girl! She recovered quickly from her fright and soon went bounding back to the story area to hear Uncle David tell more scary stories.

Now that all the excitement is over, I’m so glad to be home and in bed and looking forward to a quiet day tomorrow.  If nothing else, we need to clean up the pumpkin mess that we left all over the kitchen.