6 years ago, shortly after Erich and I started dating, we gathered with our friends Mandy and Bryan (who were also dating at the time) and had a fun evening relaxing, carving pumpkins, drinking hot chocolate, and watching a movie. This became an annual tradition for the four of us, and over the next few years... through engagements, marriages, pregnancies, etc... we continued to gather for our pumpkin carving night and the biggest stressor of the evening was usually remembering whose turn it was to pick the movie that year. My, how things change! Over the years our numbers have doubled from 4 to 8 (with four of us being age 2 and under). Our time together is double the chaos, double the fun. We had a good laugh this year at how simple things used to be, as our kids ran circles around us and Toy Story played on the tv instead of a scary movie. One thing that hasn't changed and never will, is our love for the Croningers and the special bond we share with them as we've been witness to the milestones in each other's lives over the years. As always, we can't wait to see what next year's pumpkin carving party has in store.
We stripped the toddlers, Avery and Jack, down so they could get all messy in the pumpkin goup, but they wanted nothing to do with it ("It's sticky!"). 11 month old Max, who we didn't think would be too interested, stayed in his clothes and quickly found his way to the pumpkin guts where he happily played for quite some time. He may or may not have ended up wearing pink home due to the mess he made. :-) In all, the women and children were absolutely no help and Erich and Bryan ended up doing every last bit of the prep, carving, and clean up for the pumpkins. Sorry guys!
Avery "helping" Daddy.
The annual group photo. Our "group" gets bigger every year.
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