Uncle Scott — a.k.a. Nyan’s Daddy’s brother — likes to make things out of wood. (One of Nyan’s oldest toys, in fact, is a rocking horse that Scott made soon after Nyan was born. He’s long since outgrown it, but it still sits proudly in his bedroom. Check it out here.) Scott’s got a lot of saws, drills and other woodworking equipment at his house, and whenever we’re in town, he invites Nyan to come over. This last visit was no different, so on Christmas Eve Day, we drove over to Scott’s and spent a few hours in shop.

Scott had a few projects ongoing, so he had Nyan help out with the drill and some sawing. Proper eye and ear protection gear was worn, and of course Scott made sure no little fingers or hands were anywhere near anything dangerous.

Scott had bought a little kit to make a wooden recycling truck, which basically entailed some hammering and sticker-placing (in other words, no drilling or sawing). It was a fun little thing to put together:

(There was a TV on in the shop, showing an NFL football game, and our woodworkers kept glancing over at it.)

Surely the highlight of the afternoon came when Nyan took a few pieces of scrap wood and started drawing lines on them. He asked Scott to saw them off at the lines, and then started putting them together. Scott quickly figured out what was up, and got out some glue to help Nyan assemble a little table! Really cool design.

We had to leave it in Iowa as it was too big and bulky to fit into our luggage. Still, a really impressive bit of creativity by our young engineer, we thought.

Finally it was time to head back to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. But not before Aunt Maggie got Nyan to pose for a few pictures.