Life is good

30,128

That's the number of pumpkins that were lit at the Life is Good Pumpkin Festival on Boston Common last night. That makes it into the Guinness Book of World Records. And the festival raised $250,000 for Camp Sunshine, a place in Maine that helps children with life-threatening illnesses and their immediate families through various stages of a child’s illness.

We went down and carved a pumpkin along with 100,000 other people. It was a gorgeous brisk fall night and it's hard to describe how uplifting it was to see the magical twinkling of pumpkins all around. But the other thing that blew me away? The happiness. Everyone there was happy. The people bringing in the pumpkins on forklifts, the people helping you find a spot to carve it, the people singing on stage, the Life is Good guys that kept track of how many pumpkins we were carving, and the thousands of wide-eyed children. We were all wide-eyed last night.

Pumpkins were everywhere. Set up in mazes, on scaffolding, like a skyscraper, in patterns. Here's some shots.

Pumpkin power

Burning man pumpkin

Look at the Steve Irwin pumpkin, top left. Love the cityscape pumpkin.

Gobs of pumpkins

Beauty shot

Our pumpkin

They're right. Life is good.