Keene Pumpkin Festival

We finally made it up to the Keene Pumpkin Festival this year!  We'd heard about it in the past, but had always been busy.  Every year in Keene, NH they try to break the world record for carved pumpkins.  I guess Keene held the record until 2006, when Boston beat it with 30,128 pumpkins, and they haven't been able to beat it since.

They ask you to bring a carved pumpkin to donate... so we did.

It is really a fun festival.  The whole town kind of pulls together to put it on.  They shuttled us on school buses from the parking lot to the center of town.  The boys LOVED riding on the school bus for the first time.  I'll admit it was kind of scary.  I mean going from five point harness to just sitting there...and sometimes standing there... yeah, I think James is still too young.  But Alan will be riding these all too soon. Scary.

Speaking of scary... here is our pumpkin face

When you got there, you had to "sign in" your pumpkin so that it would be included in the official count.  Then you placed it somewhere along the streets.  Here is ours on the end.

We walked down this little side street and found the Robertson building

Though the boys were more interested in climbing on the concrete blocks

Here is the pumpkin tower at the center of town

And our cute boys in front of the pumpkins

The pumpkin bowling was their favorite part!

James loved it too...though he will need a little practice before next year,

All in all it was a pretty fun event.  We didn't stay terribly long as our boys were not in the happiest moods and we were trying to get to see the second half of the BYU football game.  So we missed the food court. Bummer. And in the evening, they light all of the jack-o-lanterns.  It would be really cool to see them all lit up. I guess we'll just have to go back another year.

And we didn't get to hear the final count before we left either.  But later we found out that they did break the record!  This year there were 30,581 lit pumpkins!

Anyway, it was a fun little family trip and we're excited to go back again.