This is the story of the Sunday before Halloween. We hung around all afternoon and did pumpkin-y stuff and last minute preparations.
We hollowed them out, scooping the guts and saving the seeds.
Someone in our family is pretty gross on a regular basis (licking spilled slurpee off the playground equipment this afternoon, BTW it wasn't his slurpee, it was garbage left there from lunch). But somehow he can't stand the thought of touching pumpkin guts. Can't figure that one out.
Watching Daddy do the carving. Mum is the cleaner, Dad is the carver.
R's choice of pumpkin faces and a to do list for the day.
Occupying himself while Dad carved out his design.
K's design...
Watching it come to life.
L's was the last pumpkin to be carved, so she got creative during her long wait.
The finished products. L's, R's, K's.
And we fell asleep by candlelight.
The votive holders on either side were from VBS this summer.
The pumpkin one in the middle R made at school.
And that was the day before. Stay tuned for a recap of the actual day itself!
Another case of cool things happening when mom is at work. Kinda sad for me, but so fun for everyone else. Dad really pitched the tent in the basement and let them sleep there all night.
He slept in his sleeping bag on the couch. Before bed was a little movie on the nook (e-book). 
What great memories!
This week we went to a service to remember A's grandmother who we called GG Nan. I went back through all 7+ years of our digital photos and found all the great shots of her and passed them on to hopefully be useful some way or other.
When the kids were younger and not in school full time it was much easier to get them to visit the grandparents in their costumes. Now L is the only one home during the day, and only 3 days during the week! Well we did make it to visit Papa and I am so glad we did.
