Brickworld

We took N2 to Brickworld on Saturday because we had seen a deal for it and thought why not?  We didn't tell them about it in advance but we did tell them that it is something they would really like.  Noah's first thought was something about space.  But then when we said it was something they both liked he thought we were going to see something about meerkats.  Can you even imagine a convention about meerkats?  We pulled up to the hotel/convention center and they were so confused.   We finally told them as we waited in line to get it that they were going to a Lego convention.

Some of the creations were truly amazing!  People clearly have way too much time and money on their hands!  But we are glad that they do so that we could enjoy their creations.  I really enjoyed looking at the cities that people built with trains running around them and seeing all the little humorous additions like a storm trooper waiting in line to see a movie with all normal lego people or monkeys climbing buildings or the Blues Brothers walking down the street.  I'm sure we didn't even catch a lot of what they had in their cities.  My favorite was the vegetation whereas Brian's was the architecture.  Natalie's favorite were the castles (that surprised me) and Noah's was the huge Saturn V rocket.  Here are some random pictures.

 In the picture below you can see Wall-e and Evie.

 The garden on the left is terraced.

This was the Chicago Lego club.  They created the Sears tower and this other Chicago building.  There were some other buildings from downtown plus a few just Chicago things.  They had a guy walking a tightrope between 2 buildings.

 This is the ghost buster's house (we saw lots of ghost busters cars and people) plus their car.  You can also see the Blues Brothers on the right walking down the street.

 This is a bank robbery.  At one spot there was a donut car accident right outside a Starbucks and the police officers were eating donuts and drinking Starbucks coffee.

There was a group that set up a different display each year.  This year they did around the world in 80 days.  They had different ports and had various sights from around the world.  I loved how they did the water-it was just loose blue transparent pieces-over 2 million of them!

 Petra is all the way in the back buried in the sand.

There was a group called the Great Ball Contraption.  They had created mechanical ball movers to get the small lego balls (soccer balls and basketballs) all the way around tables.  The tables could have fit on the outside of my house (at least across the back).  It probably took us 30 minutes to get around the tables to see the balls go all the way around.  It was really hard to capture pictures of the whole thing (you can google it and there are youtube videos on it).

 Groups can enter their creations into contests.  There are contests for best group layout, best ship, best train, etc.  There was also a category for artwork with Legos.  I found some of the artwork amazing.  I loved this tree.

When you look close up you can see so many different lego pieces in the tree.  The trunk was made up of Lego cows, horses and many other things.  The green part had all different types of pieces as well including a dinosaur.

Someone had made Sunday Afternoon in the Park using the one stud round Lego pieces.  It was impressive because it looked like pointillism.

What was really amazing about all of this was that pieces couldn't be glued together if they wanted to be considered for the contests.  They had to build it all and then transport it the best way they could (someone said they used hydraulics) and then put the whole thing together on sight.

 Here are just a few more pictures.  I LOVE that a couple people had Bob Ross minifigures!  There were also tons of Doctor Who minifigures and Tardis legos around the various scenes but I didn't get a picture of those for Brian.

There was a spot where kids could build-they had a duplo section and a lego section.  The lego section were just dark gray legos.  There was a guy who let people build fighting robot legos so N2 decided to do that.  They had 1 minute and 10 pieces to build a "robot" and then they put them on a track and flipped a switch at which point the "robots" went towards each other.  Natalie's pretty easily pushed Noah's off the track.

It was a really fun day-we spent the whole day there.  Noah was tired by the end because we had walked so much!

Dying Eggs

I know I am behind, but better late than never (I really want to post pictures of my kids playing t-ball 2 years ago that I never posted on my blog but I figured those are REALLY late).  N2 really enjoyed dying eggs this year.  They liked trying to dye eggs half and half.  We also used rubber bands to create lines on the eggs.  Those actually worked pretty well.  Towards the end they did mix colors on the eggs to see what colors they would get.

 Natalie's eggs (left) Noah's eggs (right)

Missing teeth

In March Natalie had pretty loose bottom teeth.  We went to see Cinderella with my parents and then to dinner for my dad's birthday.  While at the restaurant Natalie complained so much about her tooth that hurt that I finally had to take her to the bathroom and pull it out.  She still didn't eat much (or anything) after that.  Her next tooth really could have come out the very next day but she wasn't willing to wiggle it.  The next one came out a couple days later.

 

Discovery Museum

Back in March we went to the Discovery Museum in Rockford for Charlie's birthday party.  This museum is fun!  We played with things that we haven't played with before.  They had a floor piano that I don't remember seeing before.  N2 were not horribly interested in it but I thought it was fun!  We also spent quite a bit of time in the electricity section.  Noah and Brian tried out lots of ways to try to make a windmill and see which paddles were the best, how to tilt the paddles and how many paddles to use.  N2 also made circuits which they thought was fun.

Of course we had to play in the tot spot and Natalie found a horse to play with!  They have a new camping section where the kids can fish for food, cook over a campfire and play in a tent.  We thought for a while that Noah was going to cook the deer!

We played outside for a while.  It was a pretty nice day so we spent quite a bit of time outside.  We tried to use the disks to talk to Brian far away but it didn't seem to work.

My kids were quite the climbers outside this time.  I don't think they've ever played on these structures before.

 We tried the Sympathetic swings with Natalie.  If Brian or I got going too high, Natalie would go out of control.

I made some bubble windows and N2 had a great time popping them.  I did manage to get a picture before they popped it!

The Grove

One day over spring break N2 and I met mom at the Grove.  N2 were very intrigued by all the turtles.  They were feeding them when we were there.  It was interesting how the lady would pick up certain turtles and put them right by the food.  The lady told us that some of the turtles are bullies when it comes to feeding time!  The turtles were so cute how they just crawled all over each other.  N2 also enjoyed looking around at the other animals.  One lady actually got the skunk out so we could pet it.  I thought Natalie would pet it but she wouldn't.  They also spent some time working puzzles and making a snake headband.  They really enjoyed their time at the Grove.