Monkey Business

Monkey Business, originally uploaded by diahn.

The week of Christmas is always a challenge. As much as I love Christmas, it always seems like things fly by and no one remembers to say thank you and we forgot to read the Christmas story until the very end and I didn't even get to watch Rudolph. sigh.

One of the things that adds to it is that my husband and I managed to have our first child 2 days before Christmas, so we're always having to figure out how to incorporate his birthday into all the craziness, without forgetting that it is important. That's just way too many presents in a 3-day time period for one kid, you know? Well, anyway...

D is 8 years old now - tall and handsome and clever. He's in that strange period of a boy's life where Hot Wheels and Legos and Nintendo DS's are starting to take over stuffed animals, but they haven't knocked them out completely, you know? In honor of my little monkey boy I got him a little monkey Webkin, which he promptly named "Kitty." Boys.

On the right hand side of the spread is a toy we made out at Cade's Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We drove up on the day after Christmas, which was a chilly, but beautiful day. The sky was gloriously blue, deer were abundant and tourists were not. The rangers had set up an exhibition station with period toys and the change to make ones for ourselves. We all made "buzz saws," a wooden button on a string that you wind and then pull in and out between your hands while it turns, like a buzz saw. It was fun and a nice little necklace to wear while we were walking.

And the new kitten thought it was brilliant.

Maybe tomorrow I wil post the deer pictures - and the sky pictures...it really was glorious...