Dreadful Pumpkin Experience

Lessons I learned when in Hawaii: Everything takes twice as long than what we are used to because of the enormous number of people in such a tiny little space. Therefore plan ahead so you don't have to do things on the Sabbath. And, carved pumpkins don't even last one day around here. There is a pumpkin patch that is close to where we live but it is only open to the public for two weekends. I decided on the first weekend because I knew we would busy during Halloween weekend. The original plan was to go to the temple open house and then to the Haunted Lagoon ride at the Polynesian Cultural Center. They are right next to each other. Only it was going to be way too expensive. So I thought, hey! Let's go to the pumpkin patch instead. It will be much cheaper and the kids can pick out what they want to carve this year. When I saw how long the line was just to get the car to the parking lot and realized that we wouldn't be able to make it time for the open house Todd and I decided to just come back the next day, Sunday. So after church, I have the kids change their clothes and we go to the patch. We took the hay ride and walked through pumpkins to pick out the most perfect one for carving. We were enjoying the open space, the fresh air, our time together, and we checked out. As we were walking back to the car, I couldn't find the keys. Yep! They fell out of my possession, most likely during the hayride. Our neighbor came to rescue us. We got Todd's spare key from the house and then drove back to get the van. That week I had to pay to replace the key, which meant they had to reprogram it. It was so expensive that I was left thinking we could have gone to the Polynesian Center to ride the haunted lagoon with the cost of this new key! When you know better than to do something, then just do the right thing.
The week of Halloween we carved our pumpkins for Family Home Evening. It was a lot of fun. Especially for Molly who decided to just sit and eat a cupcake instead :) I put it out front being so proud of the work the kids had accomplished. Come Halloween night they were so rotten and shriveled that no one could really tell what the design was suppose to be. We'll know next year to either store it in the refrigerator or simply wait to carve on Halloween day.