Happy Halloween - Florida style

We're low on pumpkin patches here in Florida. When you're a kid in Florida you grow up thinking that pumpkins grow on grocery store shelves or on wooden palettes in a parking lot. Some local pumpkin patches make a good attempt at creating a Fall-like environment by tossing down some hay over the palettes and decorating with craft-store faux-fall leaves so you feel a little less like the pumpkins rolled off the truck that morning.

I grew up in the UK, where there were no pumpkins for Halloween. Then we moved to a barrier island off the coast of Southwest Florida, where there were also no pumpkin patches - or even the parking lot patches that we have up here in Central Florida. So I never carved a pumpkin until my freshmen year in college. I would say how pathetic that was, but I did win the carving contest that year for managing to carve the words "Happy Halloween" into the pumpkin's mouth.

This is leading to the ultra-cool present that my boys received in the mail yesterday. My mom's friend is a Kindergarten teacher in the elementary school I attended eons ago. It's a very small barrier island school and she only has 8 kids in her class. Each year for Halloween she makes them a Florida-style jack-o-lantern. It's a coconut painted to look like a pumpkin. She gives one to each kid in her class and was nice enough to make one for my boys too! My mom shipped it up here and the boys think it's the funniest thing ever.


Although Aidan, my little caveman at times, desperately wants me to get an axe and chop it open. When the boys shake it they can hear the sloshing of coconut milk inside and they both want to drink the milk and eat the coconut. I'm convincing them that it's so much cooler left as-is, but we'll see how long it is before they're both outside with rocks and sticks busting the thing open. Ahhh….boys.

So Happy Halloween everyone!! Hope you have a wonderful time with all the little ghosts and goblins in your neck of the woods!