Pumpkin Carving 2010

The "before" shot: 

Clearing out the pumpkin guts: 

Tracing the pattern:

Carving and trying not to injure myself: 

And the finished product!  

I think it is one of our better pumpkin carving attempts.  Today, we are enjoying the fruits of our labor (aka roasted pumpkin seeds!)

Today is October 30th

Today is October 30th, but (for reasons that I do not understand) trick-or-treating is going on tonight. Not tomorrow. No, we wouldn't want to actually hold Halloween festivities on Halloween. Is this just some weird Midwest tradition that I do not understand? I also had someone tell me that trick-or-treating is usually done the Sunday before Halloween. That information is inconsistent with the fact that trick-or-treating is taking place on this fine Tuesday, but it still brings up 2 questions: 1) Why Sunday? It's still a school night (the only logical reason I can come up with for the change) and 2.) Why not just have it on Halloween?!?!?!? If anyone has the answer to this please let me know.