Carving Pumpkins With My Son

This past weekend was the first time that my son and I had ever gotten to carve pumpkins together.

For some reason, Halloween seems to always fall on his mother's weekends with him or I had to play a show with my band which kept me from being in town.

A few weeks ago when we were shopping, my son noticed some pumpkins and mentioned it would be cool to have some at my house.

My son's mom always decorates their place and me being a guy, I just never thought about it at my house since I work most of the time and am hardly there. But listening to him taught me, it was important to him.

Well I remembered our visit to the store where the pumpkins were that my son liked so we went back and picked out a couple. That is when I learned something, this kid knows a lot more about pumpkins than I do. I had mentioned that I would like to roast the pumpkin seeds and that is when he told me, in detail, which pumpkins to choose. I was impressed so I asked him, how do you know so much about pumpkins? He replied, "Dunnebeck Farms, they teach you all kinds of stuff."

We picked out our pumpkins then headed back to the house when I realized that I did't have a pumpkin carving kit for kids and I live a long way from any store. I told my son that we were going to have to go old school on these pumpkins then he asked why and I said, "when I was a kid there was no such thing as a pumpkin carving kit...ours growing up was the family butcher knife." Well he laughed but I wasn't kidding.

First we got out some sharpies to draw our designs for our pumpkins and he knew exactly what he wanted. He had his face drawn and the top marked off while I was still staring at mine.

After we got our designs dialed in, I grabbed my butcher knife and then a duller steak knife for him, plus I grabbed my filet knife for the detail stuff.

I helped my son with his and made sure he always cut away from himself and anytime something seemed a little too much for a kid and a dull steak knife, I jumped in with the filet knife to help him out.

We each made a mistake or two but thank goodness for tooth picks, we used those to hide a few bad cuts. Lol.

The funniest part of the pumpkin carving, was he and I just talking and laughing in the garage together while we were working like evil scientists dissecting a human head.

Good times.