Halloween at our House, otherwise entitled: Why I don't feel bad eating chicken

This year I had high hopes of visiting a local pumpkin patch or farm to pick out our Halloween pumpkins. But, alas, working on a thesis that needs to be done in three months turns out to be insanely time consuming. No, life consuming. And the only time we usually find all four of ourselves together is very late at night when it's pitch black outside and all the pumpkin patches are closed for the day. Maceys to the rescue! Have I ever mentioned how I love Maceys? They are open 24 hours a day, a local business, they provide diapers for you if you have an emergency and find yourself without any, they're closed on Sundays, they carry lots of "Utah's Own" local products, they have some screaming sales, they have the most divine sourdough asiago cheese and sourdough sun-dried tomato breads, they have small treats for your kids at the checkout stands (that have saved my sanity many a time), and they are so stinking friendly and courteous - they definitely still have that "small, local grocery store" feel even though aren't really that small. In short, they are wonderful. After securing pumpkins for ourselves this year at a roaring good deal - $8.00 total for four pumpkins! - we finally set out to carve them this week for Family Home Evening.

We each picked out our design (well, except Lily - we picked hers for her :))- a ghost for Eric, oak leaves for me, a skeleton with a bat for Elena, and a "Y" for Lily- and set to work.

We lost Lily about 3/4 of the way through - it was too far past her bedtime- but the three of us pressed on. Carving pumpkins is a lot of work! I turned on "The Sing-Off" radio station on Pandora to help get us through. Mmmhmm. (Is anyone else watching?? We aren't big "TV" people, but we are obsessed with this show! Aaahh, someone else watch, so we can talk about it! We are dying!) We got three pumpkins done and then decided to call it a night and finish the last one another time (maybe... :)).

Here were the results:

Mmm, so festive!

And yes, I said, those were the results. I'm really glad I took pictures right away and didn't wait for another night.

The next morning Eric found the five chickens gathered around our poor pumpkins, greedily pecking and nibbling away at our hard work. Gah! I would be lying if I said I didn't feel like drop kicking a chicken right then and there. I'm not opposed to chickens - we hope to have some ourselves someday when we own some land. And I fully believe that they should be roaming rather than cooped up. And my girls honestly really, really enjoy the "bawk-bawks". It's just that ever since one of them came up and started attacking me and biting and pecking my feet and chasing me for no reason a couple of months ago, I've kind of had a love hate relationship with them. And this was rubbing salt in the wound! They couldn't even wait a few days. No, not twelve hours after we had been slaving away, perfecting our pumpkins, those darn hens came and finished them off.

This picture is pretty generous - the pumpkins look worse in real life. Elena's skeleton is beheaded, my oak leaves look like weird blobby holes, and the "Y" is completely bedraggled.

Doesn't she look so defiant?

That's right - run away! And sleep with one eye open because I just might feel like chicken for dinner one of these days...