A Pumpkin Mouse House

It's pumpkin carving time and I thought it'd be fun for us to make a pumpkin mouse house as a family. I sent Ethan and Drew on a mouse hunt (looking for rocks that look like mice) as I set up the table for the pumpkin innards. When they returned with handfuls of mice (seen in the bottom pumpkin picture on the right) we were ready to hollow out the house. You can see that Drew was very hesitant to touch the pulp and Ethan had quite the face as he touched it. Not what I expected for two boys. Eric dug in and helped separate the seeds for roasting (which I did later.) After the pumpkin was hollowed, Drew lost interest so that left Ethan and I to carve the house while Eric entertained Drew. Then Ethan and I went and trimmed some limbs off of our front tree to make sticks for the windows, door and stairs to the house. Once it was complete, we turned off the lights and lit up the house. Ethan invited Drew and Eric back to check out the creation. We didn't finish making the mice, but we'll add a tail and a few eyes in the next few days. We plan on making 1 or 2 more carved pumpkins. Maybe on Saturday. I was abandoned to clean up the mess myself. The boys were put to bed as the pumpkin seeds were roasting in the oven. Later, when I was finishing up cleaning the kitchen, I looked out onto the couch and it was down to one; Eric was asleep. So, I finished my evening with trying out my roasted pumpkin seeds as a snack.