Halloween 2012--with a little school added in for grins

What already seems a lifetime ago, what with elections and all happening in between, Halloween brought about the typical fun for the kids--dressing up to beg for candy and carving pumpkins.  Here are the pictures to prove it...

Our Cat, Dog, Cowboy and Cowgirl...I won't mention (oh wait, it looks like I am) that I bought the youngest two costumes, but at the last minute they each decided to wear things out of our dress up bin.  Grrrrr...that's $40 I could have spent on something else.

 Since Italians don't trick or treat, we attended a base sponsored Fall Fest with booths for candy, games, a "pumpkin patch" and lots of fun.  In fact, we skipped the annual Zucca Fest (pumpkin festival) in beautiful Venzone in large part so the kids wouldn't miss out on Fall Fest.


Of course there was pumpkin carving too!!  I had the kids all come to the dinner table that night with facts about pumpkins and Halloween (some research and speaking skills).

love this picture--she's so pretty!

Pumpkin was originally used in the pie crust, not the filling.

Lucy wanted to cut something, so she cut out the nose

 The word pumpkin comes from a Greek word meaning 'large melon.'

ewwwwww

 The largest pumpkin recorded weighed in at over 1 ton.

bleck!

Illinois produces more than 95% of America's pumpkins.

goofball

Pumpkins originated in Central America.

The pumpkin is 90% water and is in the same family as cucumbers.

Riley found a pattern online to make something fabulous

After all the carving, we also counted our pumpkin seeds before roasting them.  You didn't think I was going to let an opportunity to also have a math lesson go by, did you?

Our research later told us that all pumpkins have an average of 500 seeds in them.  Our pumpkins' results?  between 450-550, so it looks like we follow the norm.  The kids all bemoaned the fact that it would have been nice to know that information before they made their estimates (no one estimated more than 250 seeds).

The end results of carving were quite pretty...

Riley's hard work paid off--look how awesome this is.  Looks just like our beloved Ammo, big ears and and all.

The original carved jack-o-lanterns were large turnips or potatoes, and the Celtic tradition was brought to America by Europeans.

All smiles!!