I’ve been watching all my friends post pictures of their carved pumpkins on Facebook.
How sweet.
Now, let’s talk about how a REAL pumpkin is carved. Many people ask us what we do with The Great Pumpkin after the weigh-off. The answer is simple: I make Jamie showcase it on our driveway until Halloween. It’s a community attraction and I catch the most random people marveling at it. Last week, it was the garbage man who moved the garbage can beside it and took a picture. “I told my wife it was as big as a garbage can and she’s not gonna believe it.”
Another sweet man talked to Jamie and then, as if it had given him a new lease on life said, “Thank you sooooo much for growing it.”
Could The Great Pumpkin be as good as therapy?
Though it generally lasts until Halloween, it ain’t pretty after a month of baking in the sun. Pumpkin guts are usually oozing down our driveway, making it a veritable horror show. But this year was different. Jamie’s pumpkin “Christine” has miraculously not shown signs of rotting out so he resolved we were going to carve it for the first time. Have you ever carved a 837-pound beast? Neither had we. Please excuse the blurry pictures; they were taken at night with my iPhone.
We made an event of it by inviting some friends over for FHE. 
Cookies and hot chocolate with pumpkin spice marshmallows are essential.
Then you get out the power tools. 
When that doesn’t work, you try a shovel. 
Once you finally break through the top, you get your first glimpse inside and it was miraculously not rotting out. 
This almost made Jamie weepy. It was like he was gazing into some fantastical cavern.
Next, you dive in, scoop out the guts and separate the seeds. To those blasphemous people who ask if we eat them: they are dried, sold or traded with other growers.
Entire children were almost lost in the process.
From there, we carved out the face–not an easy process when the skin is almost a foot thick. 
In fact, the eyes took so long to carve out that I mused to Jamie, “maybe you should make the mouth smaller because the eyes are taking so long. 
He took one wavering look at me, then back at the pumpkin. “She’s gotta have a big mouth.” 
It was like music to my ears.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 