Wandering Wednesday: Lego Con

Okay, technically it's called "Lego Kids Fest", but really it's a Lego convention. I don't know where I heard about it, but when I discovered that one was going to be about two hours from here, all I could think was, "Road trip!"

We love our road trips. And our Legos. I thought the experience would be a great Christmas present for the kids AND it still cost much less than Hot Guy and Lovebug's coveted Lego Death Star .

Giant. Piles. Of. Bricks. 

After the initial huge piles of Duplos (which my kids never play with anymore, except for when there are HUGE piles of them), we strolled over to the Lego creations. This Lightning McQueen was pretty sweet. 

Life-sized Lego Hagrid. 

I make a point of encouraging Ironflower's Hermione obsession. 

Giant pile of regular Legos. Hugmonkey and I did this while Hot Guy and the big kids went to the Lego Master Builder Academy. The Master Builder Academy was Lovebug and Ironflower's favorite part of the whole experience. They got to meet a Master Builder and learn some building strategies. 

Hugmonkey and I also hit the Lego City area; you could build vehicles or buildings and add them to the Lego City display. 

We met up again at the monochromatic build. All the bricks were the same color (obviously) and the same size - the classic two by four. And yet the projects were amazing. 

Ironflower's. 

Hugmonkey's. 

Lovebug's. And theirs weren't even the best. 

Squee! Lego Harry Potter! 

I wonder how much it would cost to buy that whole display? 

This was where you made vehicles and raced them. 

We spent a lot of time there. 

We built buildings to add to a giant map of the United States. 

Lovebug made the Empire State Building. 

More time at the giant Lego pile. See the cool city Lovebug is adding to? Well, the only negative part of the trip happened here. A boy around 7 or so had made a giant Lego gun, and then decided to destroy the city. He knocked down every building, yanked a house out of a toddler's hands and destroyed it and just acted like a little jerk. No parent stopped him or said anything (except me and Hot Guy, not that he listened) and no one from Lego stepped in. 

Next we went over to the family build competition. We had to make things from Star Wars, to the joy of the boys in the family. 

We played Ninjago, which is actually way more fun than I thought. 

The boys did Mindstorms while Ironflower and I went to the Lego Friends area. We would like you to know that while we are technically against the idea of "girl" and "boy" Legos, we had a lot of fun building with the Lego Friends sets. We don't know why, but they seem to be addicting. 

There was an area with Lego Castle stuff. 

There was Batman. 

The whole thing was four and half hours long and we were there for every minute. We actually could have used another half hour or so - we didn't get to the Lego art area or take a picture with Lego Santa. 

Way better (and cheaper) than our trip to Legoland a few years ago. I mean, Legoland is really just an amusement park with some Lego details - there's no Master Builder Academy and only a teeny building area. Lego Kids Fest is a much better option for kids who love Legos. And Disney World is a much better option for kids who love amusement parks. 

Wandering Wednesday: Bag It

I'm not too sure about this theme. I came up with all these days of the week theme ideas (ie Mildly Embarrassing Monday, Teaching Tuesday, you'll see what else) while I was supposed to be paying attention during a meeting. I need guidelines so that every post I write doesn't turn into a misanthropic rant against the all the people who bug me. And I wanted something more original than Wordless Wednesday - er, no offense to Wordless Wednesday, I've done it countless times. But for me it's  like an ex that you keep returning to when you're lonely; there's no challenge or creativity or bravery involved. The ex may be a perfectly lovely person (or not), but he's not the One.

Tangent alert! Tangent alert!

Anyway, so I thought of "Wandering Wednesday", where I could post tips about road tripping with children, places worth visiting and stuff like that. Not that I'm an expert on traveling the way I am on teaching and embarrassing myself, but I'm not an idiot, either. Besides, I've actually seen things I've come up with on my own as pins on Pinterest. That's gotta count for something, right?

If you (like I often am) are too lazy to click the link, it shows an outfit packed into a Ziploc-type bag. I totally came up with the same idea on my own when we road tripped to Florida when Hugmonkey was a baby. I packed kids' outfits - diapers/undies, socks, tops, bottoms - into bags and labelled them with each kid's name. I even did a version for the adults. I had separate bags for bathing suits and water shoes, too. That way it's easy to pack them when they're still wet, if you have to. For that trip, I think I even did the kids' toys in plastic bags - one for crayons, one for Legos, one for Barbies. . .

Now, my kids all pack their own backpacks of stuff and we have special LEGO cases so that masterpieces don't get broken. 

Lego cases in action. 

But the bags are great for little kid toys. And I still do the outfit in a bag thing - in addition to keeping everything organized, it made it easier for the kids to help me pack.

Is this information helpful and/or interesting? Do you have a better theme idea for Wednesday? I like alliteration (obviously) but I'm open-minded. I don't have a lot of topics of expertise, so don't suggest anything too challenging.

Wordless Wednesday: Birthday Trip

We took Lovebug to the city yesterday for his birthday trip. Ever since we took Ironflower to the American Girl store for her birthday, Lovebug has been wanting something similar. So yesterday we went to the big Lego store in Rockefeller Center and out to lunch in the city. 

Hot Guy had a meeting in Chelsea in the late afternoon, so Lovebug and I went to Books of Wonder. I think we could have spent another hour there - and we definitely could have spent more money.