Carving

For Family Home Evening, we carved pumpkins. I know it’s too early, but my daughter has show and tell in a few days and she’s supposed to bring something that starts with the letter “J.”
She wants to bring a Jack o’ Lantern.

I used the pumpkins to teach a Family Home Evening lessons about yuckies. I told them every person on earth is just like a pumpkin.
We’re all yummy and wonderful and full of goodness, BUT we do have some yuckies inside too. I reinforced the point: THAT’S OKAY!
We’re supposed to have yuckies so we can learn about them and see the difference between the good and the bad.
“We can get the yuckies out of us ourselves,” I said, “No matter how hard WE work to be good and perfect and THE BEST… WE can’t do it. Heavenly Father and Jesus are the only ones who can take the yuckies out of us. We have to ask them too though.”
We talked about how we’re mostly good (we went around the table and each talked about the good in us), and when we do something bad it doesn’t mean WE are bad… even though pumpkins have goo and slime inside of them, they also have plump, delicious flesh that is SOOOOOOOOOO worth saving.

I told them the story of Alma the Younger -how he had a lot of yuckies inside. I even drew my own stick figures and they were oh so pathetic.
When the story was over and we pulled pumpkins out and started carving, I asked the kids:
“What story did Mom tell?”
*silence*
“We don’t know, Mom,” my son finally said.
“Al…” I prompted their little memories, “Al… Al…”
“ALLLLVIN and the CHIMPMUNKS!” My daughter cried out and then started quoting Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Awe. some.

At least the pumpkins turned out good, right?

I texted the above picture to my brother and wrote, “I don’t think they’ll last until Halloween, but at least they’ll last long enough for Lacy to take to show and tell on Thursday.”
He texted back, “I’ll be surprised if Cinderella lasts past midnight.”

It made me laugh out loud which wasn’t very attractive since the past few days I’ve been a mess o’ snot and phlegm.
Very UN-Disney Princess-ish.