One of our favorite family home evening activities

Believe it or not, when I became pregnant, my camera-happiness just near disappeared. It revived itself for our trip to Europe, but when I'm home I don't even think of pulling out the camera anymore. I don't know if I'm saving up my energy for the thousands of pictures I will take of our new baby next spring, or what, but I have been a pathetic documenter of our family home evening activities lately.

Until now. This week was our annual pumpkin carving and caramel apples evening, and it is one of my favorite things to do with friends. This year things were a bit slower going, as we had three new additions to our family home evening group who required frequent attention. Luckily their addition really raises the average cuteness factor of our group, so we don't mind snuggling with them.


And the carving went on. Krista and Ertle, on the left, made a wicked cool Nightmare Before Christmas spooky jack o' lantern, and Jason and Kim made a butterfly for Kinsey.


Kinsey helped with the pumpkin, but was a bit traumatized after sticking her hand into the goo...


Krista and Ertle kicked off the caramel apples, which were amazing. We each brought a topping to share, and the end product was sticky, but soooo worth doing every day. I mean, think of all the nutrients in those apples!


Nick, if you ever get sick of Brookston pulling off your glasses, we'll take a hit for the team, and borrow him for a year or two. Just say the word...


Here are the end products: The Nightmare Before Christmas, the butterfly, the Empey's happy faces pumpkin, and our I-can't-really-think-of-any-good-ideas star pumpkin. Maybe our end product wasn't very impressive, but I think that our approach nowadays is more of the "joy in the journey" variety. Did we have joy? Yes. Check!