My beautiful eight year old daughter is an amazing monkey making apprentice.  However, she is also super talented at bringing the monkey making fun to a complete halt.  You see, if anyone at her school has a germ, Lizzy is determined to bring it home and share it with all of us.  This time she brought home strep throat.  At least it was good timing and she only missed a few days of school instead of the entire week.  Trying to find a 24 hour pharmacy on Thanksgiving day was an adventure we hadn’t had before.

Soon after the Turkey was served I began to feel ill, followed quickly by my husband.  Then we were down and out.  My monkeys arms laid forgotten for the rest of the weekend, not able to be attached to the waiting bodies.  Thankfully we are all on antibiotics and feeling better now.  Monkey production is back to full steam ahead.  I put up 4 new ones on etsy.  Hopefully by the end of the week there will be more friends up to join them.  I have a craft fair in a week and a half so I better get to sewing.

I’ve received many questions about my profile picture on Facebook and figured it was about time I explained why the monkeys I make aren’t the only sock monkeys around.  It comes down to family fun.  Yes, we are that annoying family that coordinates our Halloween costumes.

One of the things I love about Omaha is that there are so many great things to do as a family.  This is especially true of the fall season.  One of the great events is the Halloween Spooktacular at Omaha Zoo.  It has become a family tradition.  We haven’t missed one, until this year, since we moved here 7 years ago.  At first we attended like any other resident, we dressed up our kids and stood back as they had fun trick or treating all over the zoo.  Then an amazing thing happened, my sister was stationed here 5 years ago!  The memories of how our parents made a big deal over Halloween spurred us to create new family traditions.

We have done Zombies and gone to the Zombie Walk.

We have done ‘The Wizard of Oz.”

We have done “Alice in Wonderland.”

We have done “Snow White.”

But I am most proud of the Sock Monkeys.  As my obsession over sock monkeys grew stronger the next logical step was to turn my whole family into sock monkeys.  🙂  It started with my husband’s costume, I wasn’t even sure I could make it work.  Then it grew to costumes for the whole family.

My husband was dressed as the traditional red heel sock monkey, while the rest of us were more like my monkeys, a little bit funky.  Everyone got to decide what kind of monkey we wanted to be.  For my daughter pink pokedots and a tutu.  My son liked the black and white stripes with a football on his chest.  My sister’s monkey was dressed as Wonder Woman.  And for me, what’s Halloween without a witch costume.  So my purple monkey wore a skirt and witch hat.

We had experienced great reactions with our previous costumes.  People stopping us to take pictures with us at both the Zoo and Vallas Pumpkin Patch.  They were nothing compared to the reaction we received from our monkey costumes.  Word to the wise… if you are dressed as a stuffed character children will bum rush hug you, adults will giggle when they see you, and every two steps someone will ask to take a picture with you.  It was slightly exhausting, but great.  It was also my first step into the world of creating my own sock monkeys.

If you have never done something this silly, I highly suggest it.  It will make you smile.

So now monkey heads live at the top of my bookcases waiting for the next opportunity to come down and make others smile.

I hope that answers your questions.  Have a monkey day.

The craft fair at Northwest High School was a success.  I am thankful to all the people who made one of our monkeys a part of your family or even just gave them a smile as you walked by.  One woman bust out laughing when she saw the monkeys and it meant more to me than the money we made today.  For my family and I, the monkeys do truly make us smile.  Any sock monkey makes me smile, but there is something really special about watching the monkeys come to life with their individual personalities.

I never would have expected the number or vendors or patrons at a High School Craft Fair.  It was amazing.  The staff who set this up turned what could have been chaos into a seamless fun event.  The variety of things for sale was unimaginable.  There are some creative and talented people in this world.

As non native Nebraskan that are stationed here because of the Air Force, I want everyone to know how friendly people are here.  At every booth the people smiled and talked to me as though I was a long lost friend, instead of a new person competing for the cash in people’s pockets.

Thank you to everyone, and don’t forget to smile today!

I have a wonderful nephew staying with me right now.  My medical problems currently prevent me from driving so he came up to help me get to all me appointments and pick up the kids from school.  Not a lot of 19 year old boys would fly half way across the country to help out.  He is awesome!

Tuesday we went on an all out sock search.  We were also looking for a few last Halloween supplies, but socks were never far from our minds.  We covered half the town in search of the ever elusive Thanksgiving socks.  We found lots of Halloween and Christmas, but the turkeys were not to be found.  Poor guy he probably dreamed about socks.  He is going to go home and picture every pair of socks as a festive monkey.

Alas, our search turned up empty, no Thanksgiving socks anywhere.  Though I suppose empty is a bit unfair considering I did come home with 37 pairs of socks, just not the ones I was looking for.

For now, Gobble stands alone as the only Thanksgiving Monkey.