It's good to know people. When your car breaks down, it's especially nice to have a mechanic in the family, and on those occasions in life when you find yourself in need of expensive legal advice, I would recommend having a blood relative in the lawyering biz. When you are looking for someone to sing at your wedding, you are lucky if you have an opera singer coming anyway, and when it comes time to carve Jack O'Lanterns, you can't beat having a friend with a farm.
We were invited out to a pumpkin carving party this weekend, because, you see, there were just too many leftover pumpkins! That's right. Free pumpkins. And food! Candy! Costumes! Dancing! Fun times had by all! We were excited. After a few issues with the GPS being wrong and my wife being right (as always), the farm signs started to appear on the road and the kids started to bounce around in the back seat. They wanted to get their costumes on and do some carving!
Ruby, who is 6, is going as a light bulb this year. She has threatened to go as a light bulb for the past several years, and this time we finally had to do it. We did receive some flak when it was discovered that she was not an energy efficient light bulb, but she's really more of a cartoon light bulb, so I don't think she is making an environmental statement with her costume. Edward, who is 3, is going as Iron Man again. He barely fits into the costume from last year, but he is quite insistent, so if he wants to waddle around stuffed into an outfit two sizes two small, well, who am I to argue? It's his night.
There was a lot of disappointment amongst the children as they realized that we were not going out to an actual pumpkin patch to retrieve the pumpkins, but instead were choosing one (or more!) from some huge bins outside the barn. The adults were not disappointed because, hey, free pumpkins! Anyway, all traces of discontent disappeared immediately once the actual carving began. Ruby was able to carve hers all by herself for the first time, much to the terror of her parents, but there was no blood at any time, so we felt like it was a win overall. Edward actually cared about his pumpkin for the first time and carefully directed me to cut a face exactly to his specifications. Circle. Circle. Circle. Happy mouth. I believe those were his exact words.
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Ruby loved it so much that she actually carved two pumpkins, and probably would have kept going except that they turned the lights out to view all of the glowing Jack O'Lanterns made by the party-goers, and we would not let Ruby use a jagged knife in the dark. All of the pumpkins looked great, and as the disco ball lit up the barn we all began to dance as they got the piñata ready.
The piñata was a huge, homemade ball of excitement that I somehow got stuck on the other end of. I had wandered over to try and snag a good location for snapping pictures of my kids, was handed a rope, and before I knew it I was in charge of pulling the thing up and down, making sure that it was a good height for the kids that were whacking it. I did manage to get a few pictures with my free hand, but mostly I held the rope. And it was actually pretty fun. When that thing finally busted open I yanked that rope back and forth, shaking candy and toys all over the place. It was a big responsibility.
When that was all over, we decided to take the kids home to bed. We had a long drive ahead of us and we had already stayed later than we'd planned. The kids were tired, but nobody wanted to leave. The music was thumping again and everyone was dancing around the pumpkins in their costumes and eating candy. In other words, it was kid heaven. Ah, who am I kidding. It was grown-up heaven too. None of us wanted to go, but as adults it was our job to make sure that we made it home and got sleep and stuff. But you'd better believe we'll be going back again next year!
For more stories from Tenor Dad, a stay-at-home-dad and opera singer, check out www.tenordad.com or www.facebook.com/tenordad
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