Toads-in-the-Hole

As we've already mentioned, Henry's favorite new vocab word is Pumpkin (or 'unkin). He uses it to describe anything rotund and orange, and - much to my delight - is understood by strangers and passers-by who happen to hear his Halloween-spirited utterance ... Ah, communication! Verbal communication! But, I digress ... So, tonight was the night that we pulled our four prize-winners out to the backyard to assist them in their holiday metamorphosis.

Adelaide, who is a mighty four years-old and can snap through a pack of chewing gum and is working on spelling words like "Dog" and "Snow" and "Courageous Princess," is alas, to young to weald a chef's knife. But, she dug into cleaning out pumpkin guts with vim often seen in four year-olds unafraid of touching things like worms. Why was I surprised?

Adelaide did use her washable marker to draw faces on two our our pumpkins, which Joel happily cut out. I think Joel was actually kind of relieved to have a year off from carving his usual pumpkin face.

This year, we found that one of our pumpkins was already kind of rotten inside. Yuck. Still, we scooped out the yucky mess inside and Adelaide posed for a kind of Gross-Out Face with a tongue sticking out and eyes crossed. I attempted to copy her facials, but ended up with more of a Sinister-Looking Face than a Gross-Out Face. Adelaide tried to help by drawing "the line in the middle of your tongue" to clarify that the pumpkin is sticking out its tongue and not bearing its fangs, but I don't know ... Negative space is a tricky thing to master

Boo to you!