New Beginnings: Pumpkin Day

Pumpkin Day in our house consists of eating and carving pumpkins!
For a snack, I made Pumpkin Pie Chex Mix. It was so delicious. We ate it up in minutes! It took much longer to make than it did to eat. Cooking it in the oven made the house smell delicious too. :)
Mike and I enjoyed our favorite Samuel Adams beer. Harvest Pumpkin Ale. I had a hard time finding it though! All I could find was their Winter Collection. Between that, the Christmas stuff everywhere in the stores, and the snow storm outside, I was afraid that maybe I had missed Fall. But alas, I found the last two boxes of Samuel Adams Autumn mix at Wal-Mart.

Mike and I carve our pumpkins but the kids still paint them. I think Little Miss Chatterbox could have carved hers this year but she prefers to paint. This child lives to paint. "Plus," as she pointed out to us, "they last longer when you paint them." Very true.

This was Little Miss Sunshine's first time with paint. Usually I just give her a brush and some water. She loved it and was very particular about where the paint went. I was impressed with her concentration.

I was so eager to cut open a pumpkin and let Sunshine explore inside. All the other kids loved that at her age. But this was her reaction:

I have never seen a kid scared of everything like she is! She wouldn't go near it. Her older siblings found this quite entertaining. It's tough being the youngest sometimes. ;)

Mike was drawing out his design and once in awhile would put his pencil in his mouth. We all cracked up when we saw Sunshine copying him! Monkey see, monkey do.

Mr. Funny's finished pumpkin. He painted St. Benedict, the Sacred Heart and a rainbow.

Mr. Tickle had painted a really nice picture of St. Francis! But he was having so much fun painting that he didn't want to stop and ending up painting over his St. Francis. He told me this was his abstract pumpkin. ;)

I carved the symbol that you find on the back of the Miraculous Medal.

Mike ended up carving the Immaculate Heart. It seems we had a Marian theme this year!

Chatterbox was still painting long after everyone else was done and I forgot to take a picture of her finished product! But she painted the Sacred Heart, the Immaculate Heart, the Miraculous Medal symbol, the Holy Spirit as a dove sitting on roses, a pink rose, and a blue rosary. Did I mention she likes to paint? ;)

Mr. Funny wanted to take pictures.

For dinner we had Pumpkin Chili. Mike and I liked it but we had a hard time getting the kids to eat it. For dessert we had Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars and Pumpkin Hot Chocolate.