The family part centers around the cutting of the jack o'lantern. We have a family devo we do each year (Jack can almost lead it now) that compares God's work in us to our work on the pumpkin -- pulling out the yuck, giving us eyes to see like he does, a mouth to speak his word and a light inside us to shine to the world.
One thing we've discovered is that pumpkin carving is not pre-school attention span friendly. Once all the yuck has been pulled out, the boys frequently tire of watching dad work with the carving tools. So each year I work on trying to find something to keep their attention that doesn't involve leaving Luke outside by himself. This year I found a cute idea on Pinterest -- and then made it my own. I didn't even pin the original so there's no way I can tell you how to really accomplish the "look" -- you'll just have to settle for my version. Fair warning though -- I am NOT crafty. Everyone reading this blog could probably do a better version without much effort.
First I took some good ole painter's tape and taped out my design. I chose a "P" with a circle around it. Again, I'm sure some of you could do MUCH better. But work with me. And sorry I don't have pics of this stage...I wasn't sure it would be a success so I didn't photo-document my steps.
Then when it was "boring" time on the carving side of things, I had each child pick out a color of paint that would be his or her own. Jack picked red, Grace purple and Sam teal. I picked pink (shocker!) and Luke was green. The big boys decided to pick dark blue for Andrew and yellow for Andre. I told the kids to just start painting the pumpkin with the instructions that it was okay if someone painted over your color and you could paint over theirs.
As we painted I talked about what happens when the colors mix. Sometimes it changes completely, other times it just sort of mixes. Still other times it makes a new shade of the same color. (Got a little homeschool in there for Sam too!).
Then I hit the transition. See we are a blended family. And with that blending sometimes comes some "stuff" that's expected but still difficult to deal with. Add to that the typical occurrences of sibling rivalry and our house at times is a bit battle weary. Luke and I work very hard to create a sense of unity and one-ness in our house. And this pumpkin painting was a great way to do that. I told the kids that just like the paint, each person in our family was a little different. As we live together we rub onto each other -- sometimes that rubbing changes us completely, sometimes we just mix a little and sometimes we create something that a little different looking but still the same. But the cool thing is that our together-ness is way better than our single selves. I explained how our pumpkin would look if we used just one color. And I showed them how adding Andre's yellow to Sam's blue and Jack's red made two different looks. And that's what family does. A little of this and a little of that and we mix together daily and at the end of everything we make a beautiful picture.
After the paint dried (sort of...that much paint took a L.O.N.G. time to dry) we pulled off the tape and saw the "P". Then we talked about how we may all be a little different but the one thing that's the same is that we are Pearsons and that we had to work together to make such a beautiful pumpkin.
I know it's super cheesy. But it worked and it seems to have stuck as the boys have been talking about it for a while. Hopefully it can be something that we can draw on when we get to the "us vs them" comments.
