Jack-O-Lantern

Are you crazy? This was one of my first questions to my Keetch family, after I had been a member for less than one month. As family traditions go, we each have our own and this one at this scale was new to me. The Keetch family tradition is to carve pumpkins for Halloween decorations. No, I'm not talking one or two pumpkins. We have done up to as many as thirty jack-o-lanterns in one year. However this is a tradition that I have enjoyed making part of my own. This year we bought twenty pumpkins. On Monday before Halloween Dallas, Gaylene, Wayne, and I gutted the pumpkins. We spent a couple of hours every night for the rest of the week creating our jack-o-lanterns. An individual chooses a pattern from Dallas's foot tall stack (he carefully selects one's that he has not done before). Traditionally , the pattern was taped to the pumpkin, and one would poke holes around the pattern. However this year things changed. Thanks to a tip from the channel 2 news team, we found a time saver in tracing paper. We taped the pattern onto the tracing paper and the paper onto the pumpkin, traced the lines with a pencil, removed the papers, and viola the pattern was in a wax line right on the pumpkin. No more connecting the dots. Easy and less time. Why didn't we discover this soon. The best part of the project is unveiling the pumpkins at the ward party or on Aunt Pat's lawn all lit up.