Pumpkins, Pumpkins, and More Pumpkins!

I'm thankful for friends that walk the homeschooling journey with me. We live life together and learn together as we go. And, we have fun together! Weird and unsocialized? Hardly. Well, maybe weird, but definitely not unsocialized.

This week a group of over 70 got together for a day of everything pumpkin: carving, crafting, tasting, and playing. The dip in temperature and the gusts of wind kept our party inside, but it didn't stop the laughing and the fun. It added to the craziness, for sure, but it also made for a great lesson in flexibility and patience.

I'm so thankful for the older kids who were there with the intent purpose of being helpers to the younger kids! My boys made two new friends who helped them design and carve their pumpkins so that I could be in another room doing crafts with Annalyse.

Huge props and kudos to the Wonder Women who put this fun day together - a lot of details to plan for with a large range of ages to accommodate.

The big kids faced difficult decisions for what to carve and then intense focus while carving. The little kids enjoyed lots of crafts, which meant lots of glue, which, thankfully, included lots of wipes. The moms? We discovered and hovered around the buffet table of pumpkin-related goodies. My personal favorite - and I'm on a mission to find out who made them - were pumpkin cake balls covered in melted white chocolate. Yummm!

But what would the purpose of coming together for a day of fun be without some intentional time to talk about Jesus and how he makes all the difference in the kind of fun we have? One of those aforementioned Wonder Women shared a great lesson on being a light to our world. And now, my four year-old has repeatedly informed me that we should leave the candle in our pumpkins lit year round. He may have missed the overall point just a tad.

After three hours of nonstop pumpkin fun, it was time to try to return the church classrooms to order and call it a day. Whew! All I did was follow kids from room to room and I was wiped out. Who knew that taking pictures of your kids having fun could be so tiring?!