Saturday night, as my husband and I were strolling aimlessly through Gatlinburg and trying not to miss our kids (yes, we’re lame…we get 24 hours away from them and that’s all we think about!) we decided to buy each of them a small gift. My youngest was easy…we found a sippy cup with his name on it. We couldn’t find anything personalized with my oldest son’s name, at least nothing he would want. So we bought the sippy for my toddler and headed to another store where we encountered a huge selection of Webkinz. I’d heard about them from friends of kids his age, so I knew what they were. He had never mentioned them so I wasn’t sure if it was a “girl” thing or if he had friends with them or anything. But last week at a b-day party for a classmate, one of the gifts was a Webkinz and it seemed like they were all excited over it so I figured it was just a matter of time before Webkinz mania hit our house.

So here we were, faced with this Webkinz display. After much debate, we chose the black bear (Since black bears, both real and fake are all over the Smoky Mtns) and paid for our purchase. Today we finally had the time to sit down and register his new Webkinz friend at the website and were introduced to the entire Webkinz world. We had fun outfitting his bear’s house, buying food, dressing it, etc. It looks like a fun little site. And this gives us an easy “collectible” type item to tell people if they ask what he wants for b-day or Christmas!