New Halloween Tradition - "Carving" Pumpkins!

Last night for Family Home Evening, the Felshaws and Rusty Hughes families invited us to "carve" pumpkins with them.  However their tool for carving was much different than any I have ever used before - guns!

For those of you who don't know, I am not a big fan of guns.  I didn't grow up with them and since my Dad is a psychologist I occasionally heard horror stories of people who needed counseling because they accidentally shot another person.  In my mind guns have always equated fear and danger.  While for Burke's family guns = fun!  He has taught me that there is nothing to fear (in theory) if you treat guns with great respect and teach your children gun safety from a very young age.  Regardless, I was a bit skeptical when we pulled up, worried that someone might get hurt, but willing to give it a try because I knew Burke was excited to get to shoot his guns again.

Brogan first had us draw a basic face on all the pumpkins.

Then we lined them up about 30 yards away and attempted to carve them out by aiming for the eyes, nose and mouth.  To my surprise, it was great fun!  I managed to get a couple of eyes and the nose before Daphne needed me.  The kids were loving it too - watching from a safe distance behind and scrambling all over the sand dunes.  Daphne thought the big kids and the big bangs were so cool!

Sweet baby Ali managed to fall asleep despite all the bangs and shouts.

However, the menfolk soon tired of simply hitting idle targets and began to improvise by launching the smaller pumpkins into the air like giant clay pigeons and blasting them to smithereens!  Notice all the pumpkin guts on the ground in the video below from previous pumpkins.

We ladies then each took a turn shooting a rolling pumpkin.  Shantelle was amazing and split her pumpkin right in half!  Mine only tore a big chunk down one side, but I was happy that I actually hit it.  Finally, Brogan pulled out a couple cans of Tannerite which are exploding shooting targets.  The guys stacked all the remaining pumpkins in a big pile up against the wall and put the explosive right in the middle of them.  This video does not do the explosion justice at all, especially since the battery died less than a second after it blew up - you can hear enough of my scream however to get the idea that it was a BIG bang.  Chunks of pumpkins landed all over the place so I'm glad we had the babies in the car for that one.  Go to the 40 second mark in the video for the actual shot.  

I think we have a new Halloween tradition on our hands.