So here's the full story of the melted plastic pumpkin...

We had our neighbor over for dinner. (No we didn't eat him although it was a Halloween dinner.) He is good at pumpkin carving so we decided to carve pumpkins that night. The missionaries heard what we were doing and their dinner plans had canceled on them so we had them for dinner too. We had the best pork tacos ever- thanks to my friend Kara for the recipe from Cafe Rio. We are huge fans. Right before dinner, Luke was snacking on some homemade caramels that I made and told me to hide them quick before he eats them all. He eats treats if they are out so I always have to find a good hiding spot for them. I like to have treats around and just have 1/day. Luke is a "eat the whole bag of m&m's" kind of guy. So I had set them in the washroom and Luke found them again and asked me to hide them better so... instead of leaving our company I asked Luke to close his eyes and I made pretend footsteps all around the kitchen as if I had walked out of the room. Then my brilliant funny place to hide the caramels hit me... THE OVEN. The little thought popped in my brain about how bad it would be if I forgot they were in there and melted it but then I told myself that I wasn't going to be cooking for the rest of the night and I would have a treat before I went to bed so I wouldn't forget they were in there. Well then the missionaries decided that they wanted to try roasted pumpkin seeds so... I PREHEATED the oven to 400 degrees. A little while later my super-sensitive fire alarm went off and I was mad at it because I knew the pumpkin seeds boiling on the stove weren't burning. But then the awful truth hit me.... I MELTED THE PLASTIC PUMPKIN WITH THE CARAMELS INSIDE IT!!!!! AWWWW! I was so mad at myself for not listening to my little nagging brain. I opened the oven and sure enough- well you saw the picture. Then I started laughing about how stupid I was. It always happens in front of company too. So the rest of the night they teased me and we finished our pumpkins. Then John, our neighbor helped me break all the plastic off of the wire rack (I got lucky) and it just broke right off. It could have been so much worse. Very little smoke and a little bit of stink. And just a little on the bottom of the oven which I scraped off with a knife in the morning. I am such an airhead sometimes. Hopefully I never put something in the oven that shouldn't be there again. And the worst part was the 20 or so caramels that were still inside it. I wanted to cry but I laughed instead. Kind of like last week when the brand new bucket of salsa that I had just bought at Costco fell out of the trunk onto the driveway when I opened it. And like a couple of months ago when the gallon of milk fell out fo the trunk and broke and spilled everywhere. Good thing I don't cry over spilled milk!

Luke's is above and Missionaries' is below. Mine is the girly one of course celebrating out 5th anniversary. More to come on that.