Harper has had the most amazing teachers so far in her short little school life.  Mrs. Tanner, from last year, will forever be an important part of our Kelley story.  She was such a prominent part of a very tough year for our family and she loved Harper and our family well.  She’s incredible and we all just adore her.  There may have already been a few quarrels over who will get her for kindergarten next year.  Huddy says he will.  Sol says he will.  Do you see the dilemma?

This year Harper has Ms. Flowers…AKA Aunt Susan…AKA Sooooooosan (said in a ghostly manner).  Susan has been loving our family for several years now, so it’s been quite fun for Harper and our whole family to experience her in the roll of teacher.  And what an excellent teacher she is.

Halloween is fast approaching and it’s probably my favorite holiday.  Yes, yes, yes…it’s surprising right…all that loving Jesus and Halloween at the same time 🙂  It’s just so much fun to me and candy is pretty much my kryptonite in the best, most deliciously sugary way in which I completely welcome.

Ms. Flowers has a pumpkin day leading up to Halloween and asked me to get a pumpkin, hollow it out and then fill it with jello.  You can re-read that if you would like.  I’ll give you a second…

So yes, a pumpkin full of jello.  A jello filled pumpkin.  A pumpkello if you will.  Or maybe it should be pumpello.  Or jellkin.  Either way it probably should just be called Straight-Up-Disgusting-Fun.  She then fills it with little items for the kids to dig their little hands through and find.  She even puts in cooked spaghetti.  Did anyone else just gag?  Then they write about the experience.  I’ve decided I would like to re-take 1st grade with Ms. Flowers.

I was a bit nervous about filling the pumpkin, not knowing how much jello I would need.  Susan told me to go with yellow jello because other colors have stained the kids hands and arms in the past.  I bought all the yellow jello the store had and still didn’t think I had enough so I went with some orange too.  I made all the jello at once in two large mixing bowl.  Boiled two pots of water all at once and used my big daddy 4 cup glass measuring cup to knock it all out.  It worked perfectly.  This was a medium to large sized pumpkin…$6 at Kroger.

In the end I made a little over 20 cups of jello.  Josh and the kids hollowed the pumpkin out and then when I was dumping all the jello in, Josh and I just got so tickled with how nasty the whole thing was.  It was quite hilarious.

Then I had to fit this giant jello filled pumpkin in our refrigerator.  I started to put it on the top shelf and realized that was going to be a giant jello disaster waiting to happen because I was positive the weight of the pumpkin was going to break the shelf.  So I removed the stem top and went with the much safer and better idea of the bottom shelf.  Then I enjoyed how funny it was to open the refrigerator and see the smiling jack-o-lantern staring back at me.  Good times.

Seriously, a pumpkin just couldn’t get more fun right?  Susan did say this was not originally her idea, but she’s been teaching for  19 years and doesn’t remember where the idea came from.  So I’m giving her the props 🙂

High-5s or fist bumps for amazing teachers and Halloween love yo.

Happy Friday!