what were we thinking

Autumn brings such great festivities. School starts, apple picking, football games and pumpkin patch adventures. Each year we get pumpkins but often leave them uncarved. This year we thought it would be awesome to carve pumpkins with Gibson and Elliott. We realized that our family was now getting older and what fun it was going to be...

The trip to the pumpkin patch was perfect. It was a warm fall day with the sun shining down on us the entire time. Gibson walked down the apple orchard into the pumpkin patch and was in heaven. Before we knew it our little red wagon was filled to the brim with every kind of pumpkin imaginable. Gibson was not picky. He had big ones, little one, fat ones, green and even rotting pumkins in his wagon and wanted to call each one his own. He ran up and down the patch looking for his next treasure. Even Elliott enjoyed sitting next to and pounding on his pumkin. After much bargaining and sneaky disposal of unwanted pumpkins we had found our four pumpkins and were ready to carve them.

Of course, the carving did not take place until later in the week after we all got home from a long day of school. That should have been our first clue of how the pumpkin carving was going to turn out. We prepared as best as we could. The floor was clear, Gibson was given clear instructions on how to use the carving tool and Elliott was set up with his favorite snack. We were carving pumpkins! It started out ok until... Elliott got bored with his snacks and wanted to play in the pumpkin goup...Gibson didn't want anything to do with the pumpkin goup...Gibson had to sit in "uh-oh" for wielding the knive in inappropriate ways. At this point Steve and I were just trying to carve the pumpkins as fast as we could.

Finally, when everything was finished and everybody was calm again, we realized that we had successfully carved our pumpkins. In that moment I was thinking that this was not as picturesqe as I had hoped, but looking back maybe it was. Maybe Gibson's perspective when choosing the right pumpkin is one that we all need to have. Gibson's only criteria for a pumpkin was that it had to be orange and he had to be able to lift it. Maybe we have such high expectations that we are only setting ourselves up for a let down. Maybe the lesson we need to learn is to view the world through the eyes of a child...simple and accepting of all...maybe we needed to change the way we were thinking...