A Family Tradition Continues . . .

I love family traditions. We don't have a lot of them, but I look forward to them every year. My son Ryan is now 21, so he has outgrown (or at least he thinks he has) some of the things we did when he was younger. But some of them remain -- and last week was one of them.

We carve pumpkins.

We found an evening last week when we were both available. This is getting harder each year, especially since Ryan works a lot of evenings at Best Buy. I planted pumpkin seeds in the back yard in the spring, watered and tended them all summer, and had visions of nice big homegrown pumpkins this year. We got four "size challenged" ones instead. Ryan had mentioned that he would like to carve a big one this year, so I made a trip to Sam's and bought two monsters. And we went to work.



Of course, in our family there is an observer for everything we do . . .



Once we finished, we moved them into the kitchen where the light is better. That's my effort that Zoe is investigating. Ryan finally took off the lid so she could get a better sniff.



Ryan went for smaller slits and more scars and slashes. And we found that his held up better over time.



Ryan insisted on this picture -- he wanted to see which face looked more gruesome. It was a close vote . . .



After a couple of days in the house, we moved them outside next to a hard maple in front. Its leaves were really pretty this year. That little bitty pumpkin in the middle was the biggest of our homegrown crop. Good thing I took the shot when I did -- the one at right was taken three days later after a day of hard rain and wind. The leaves are really pretty around here this year, but after a good wind the rakes come out!



I was hoping to get one shot that I really liked to print out and save. I think this one was it . . .