Jack-O-Abi

As Abigail's first Halloween approaches, many preparations must be made. Costumes, decorations, parties, and Jack-O-Lanterns top the VanDongen list. Well, the middle VanDongen, Sam, has been training for Trick-or-Treating with wind sprints and push-ups. The kid doesn't even like candy; he's just turned Trick-or-Treating into a competition.

The Saint Olaf Halloween Carnival has been a tradition for us since Alex was in first grade. It's an evening of good clean Catholic fun; zombies, angels, and guilt. Sam fell into the zombie realm, Abi was the angel disguised as a pumpkin, and the guilt was the served pizza dripping with cholesterol.

After the carnival, Sam had a soccer game in Logan. During the hour and half drive to the game, I questioned the logic of competition soccer for a 10 year old. Parents pay literally thousands of dollars in fees, gas, equipment, training, and trips every year for soccer. The money I spent trying to secure Alex a soccer scholarship would have almost paid for her college education. But then, we have one of those moments, where your son (or daughter as it was with Alex) scores a goal during a game, or saves a goal, or has a great play - and they look to the sideline to find a parents approval, then they smile - that makes it worth every penny.

Sunday was spent at grandpa Dave's and grandma Paulette's house. It was Abigail's first visit to their house. We enjoyed an afternoon of extreme pumpkin carving.

 



Why is it extreme pumpkin carving? Look closely at the pictures. We're outside on Grandpa Dave's deck. What you'll notice is a pile of pumpkins that rivals that at the local grocery store. In the background of one picture, you'll see a high definition flat screen TV on his deck. Yes, Sunday football outside on a deck. The second picture shows the assortment of tools used to carve the pumpkins; knives, saws, and power tools.

So what's the deal with the hard hats? The grandparents have a very large walnut tree that grows above their deck; and, it's harvest time with no harvesters. Therefore, the walnuts become random high speed projectiles accelerating toward earth at 32.2 ft/sec/sec (or 9.8 meters/sec/sec for fuzzy Europeans reading this). After the first few walnuts hit within inches of our heads; in true machismo fashion, rather than move the carving activity and sacrifice our view of the football game, we just put on hard hats. Problem solved and extreme pumpkin carving was born.

The pumpkin results were less than perfect. In fact, it's a miracle I still have all my fingers. I'm not really sure Grandpa Dave escaped unscathed; the power drill slipped several times turning normal looking Jack-O-Lanterns into Cyclopes resembling the old 'Mr. Bill' from Saturday Night Live.

The question begged is: Where was Alex during all this? That is a story for another day.