Last year, we bought pumpkins but never got around to carving them. I wasn’t quite as lucky this year.

I like Halloween. I dislike the whole pumpkin thing.

It’s not so much the carving that I dislike, it’s gutting the gourd that I find gross. Stripping out all of those pumpkin guts is a dreadful job. It’s messy, smelly and slimy. No matter how careful you are, goop gets everywhere.

I took the boys to a pumpkin patch last week. We came home with a pair of pumpkins that were both the size of basketballs. They were a good size and shape for carving, though that didn’t make me any more excited about the job.

The only thing that did make me eager to take on the task was my sons’ enthusiasm. I have two boys. Peter is 23-months-old. Bubba is 3-years-old.

They had just one request for their pumpkins. “We want them to be scary,” they said.

I cut into the first pumpkin, thinking my older son would enjoy scooping out the orange innards. He was not at all interested. I didn’t even ask the youngest for assistance, knowing full well that he wouldn’t be any help.

When it came to carving, the boys scribbled their designs on paper. Then, I did my best to interpret those markings into frightening faces. The image above is what I came up with. I’m rather proud of them.

Of course, the 45-minute cleaning and carving was followed by a kitchen clean-up that lasted 2 hours. Pumpkin guts were everywhere. There was no way to avoid washing the floor. I find getting on my hands and knees to scrub floor tile far more frightening than anything I could carve into a pumpkin.