Biscuit boos

Homework started for Biscuit at the beginning of October. He got a calendar with an assignment marked for each day Monday through Friday.

The instructions say that he didn't have to do the assignments in order. He could pick whatever he wanted to do each night. But all the assignments had to be done by Oct. 31.

So we saved the best assignment for the last night. Biscuit was supposed to carve a pumpkin with his family and count out 50 pumpkin seeds.

I waited too late and missed the church pumpkin patch we've been to before. So I just stopped by the grocery store near our house. There was a big cardboard box in the produce section and when I peered over the side, there were seven pumpkins left. And they were HUGE!

I leaned over into the box (with Biscuit offering lots of instructions on how to do it!), and tried to roll one of the pumpkins over to the side where I could reach it. It was just out of my reach, but I finally got it to move ... down farther into the box.

And let me interrupt myself to complain about this MAN who stood there and watched this whole scene. A man, I might add, who was at least as tall as Jeff.

Did he offer to help me? Did he say, "Hey, I'm a foot taller than you with a wider wingspan. Let me put it to good use and at least move that pumpkin over to the side of the box so you can get ahold of it." 

No! He did nothing but stand there and watch me while his wife studied the ingredients in the salad dressing on the rack with the bags of lettuce.

Finally, and with a nice bruise on my wrist to prove my efforts, I got a pumpkin over to the side nearest me and hoisted it out. And Biscuit went a little crazy.

"MOM!" he said way too loudly. "YOU DID IT!!! MOM, YOU GOT IT!!!"

He was too loud, but it was very sweet.

So we hauled it home and got all set up to carve it up!

Don't worry! He only got to hold the knife for the picture.

So I cut a hole in the back of the pumpkin and started to scoop out the goop. I don't like pumpkin, so the whole thing was kinda gross to me. And then I told Biscuit to scoop some.

He stuck his hand in there, and yanked it back out so quickly, the first picture I tried to take of him was blurry!

You'd think the pumpkin was giving off an electric shock!

Biscuit had to count out 50 seeds. He decided to do five piles of 10.

Next it was time to work on the face.

I gave Biscuit a piece of paper and told him to draw what he wanted me to carve on the pumpkin. He drew the face he wanted and brought it over to me.

"Mom, here's the blueprint for the pumpkin's face," Biscuit said.

Here's Biscuit's "blueprint" for the pumpkin.

Biscuit was disappointed that he couldn't do the carving, but I told him he'd have to settle for the marker he used to make his blueprint.

And here's what we came up with.

Biscuit asked if we were going to put a candle inside, but I told him I had something WAY better. It's a battery-operated strobe light that goes inside the pumpkin.

So we did this ...




Happy Halloween, everybody!