Pumpkin Carving

I had these big dreams of taking Mary Hyatt to a pumpkin patch this year.  In my mind, I pictured us letting her ride on a hayride, maybe see/pet different animals, and possibly play in a corn pit.  Unfortunately, all of those things weren't able to happen due to Mary Hyatt coming down with a terrible virus.  She was sick the only two weekends we had available in October and the last weekend we were in Decatur for Luke's wedding.  On our way back from Decatur, we decided we would still at least go buy a pumpkin and let Mary Hyatt help us carve it....even though it was just two days before Halloween.  I still envisioned us getting to Publix and having several pumpkins to choose from allowing for me to get a few cute pictures of Mary Hyatt with them. However, when we walked in there was only ONE single pumpkin left on the ground.  Ben and I laughed so hard.  That's just our luck.  Not to mention this pumpkin was totally lumpy and not "perfect" like I had envisioned.  

 And then, the second I put Mary Hyatt down in hopes that she would walk towards the pumpkin, she had a total come apart and her legs literally turned to noodles and she plopped on the floor and pitched an all out tantrum.  

Want to know the reason for the tantrum?  The rows of buggies were behind her and she wanted inside one of them right then.  My child is definitely developing a mind of her own mixed with a little stubborness (I don't know where she gets that..:)) ..Is it too early for the terrible twos to start?

Needless to say, we skipped out on the picture, reinforced Mary Hyatt's bad behavior (eek!)  by putting her in the buggy, and tried to get out of there as quickly as we could. By the time we got home, she was in much better spirits.  

 We prepared the area to carve the pumpkin by putting newspaper/coupons all underneath it.  Mary Hyatt was much more interested in those than she was of the pumpkin...

 She loves to "read!"

 I mean look at that face... I wish I had gotten a better view of it. haha You would think she was reading that she just won the lottery or something.  haha She's not dramatic at all. ;)

 This was as good as it got as far as getting a picture of Mary Hyatt with the pumpkin before... I had to be in it with her.

 Daddy got out a big sharp knife and started cutting....This intrigured Mary Hyatt...

 but then she figured it would just be fun to play with Daddy's hair while he carved it...(We aren't sure why she has such an obsession with hair these days?! haha)

 It started to get nasty as we dug out the pumpkin, so Mary Hyatt lost her clothes... Don't you just love a naked baby?!

 At first, she wouldn't have anything to do with touching the pumpkin.  I was actually pretty shocked at it  We thought she would be all about getting down and dirty and playing in all the pumpkin stuff.  She actually cried when we tried to put her hand near it.

 But, after we brought out a few kitchen utensils to help, she was a big fan. She loved to stir the pumpkin stuff...

 and then try to feed it to Ellie...(hey, at least we are sharing!:))

 Mary Hyatt really didn't get into the pumpkin stuff as much as I thought she would.  I ended up taking her to get a bath and to go to bed.  While I was putting her to sleep, her daddy finished carving the pumpkins and I must admit, he did a pretty good job!

This was the back... Mary Hyatt's initials and handprint..

 and this was the front... typical pumpkin face.

Though our plans didn't quite go as we had expected, we still made lots of good memories!  It was still a lot of fun and I'm so glad we did it!!