Flying Barrel Of Monkeys

A bag of coal at Christmas time usually doesn’t indicate niceness. Oh, but wait, it’s charcoal.

Since we have both sides of the family in town for the holidays and a freezer full of ham and turkey from a grocery store sale in November, we decided to splurge and buy ourselves a Big Green Egg to use for smoking the turkey for Christmas Eve dinner.

MonkeyMan wasn’t sure about the purchase but it was something I really wanted to get. After checking them out at the store and smoking the turkey, he is convinced it was a great purchase. I can’t wait to try cooking a pizza on it – probably as soon as we get tired of ham and turkey leftovers. The store we bought it from couldn’t deliver it until late afternoon on Christmas Eve, so we took a partially assembled one home with us instead so we’d have it in time to cook our meal. Thank goodness for YouTube – we found videos on how to finish assembly and it went together without a hitch.

We had a wonderful holiday this year with little stress. My mom has started a tradition of reading Santa Mouse to MonkeyBoy each year, so this year he made a point of leaving some cheese under the tree. He knows the story by heart now and would “read” it along with grandma.

The house is swimming in toys. MonkeyBoy has set up little stations throughout the house and he moves from place to place playing with his new stuff. I gave myself a photo break and barely took any pictures the past few days, instead just enjoying being in the moment. I did snap one of MonkeyBoy playing with his new Lego train set since MonkeyMan’s dad wasn’t here to see it opened. MonkeyBoy was especially delighted to discover that the train makes a slurping sound when it stops at the fuel station.