Tenth Circle of Lego

What a week last week. My father was in town, we golfed, we had baseball, Mandy was working, I was working, baseball practice, we took the boys and hit some golf balls, Dad left, swimming lessons and oh yeah it was Connors birthday this past weekend. Normally, this day is for this site is either Weekend Recap or a Lego of the day segment. We’re going to combine them today.  

I have spoken at length about my love/hate relationship with Lego’s.  They are fun way for our family to spend some time together building. They are the bane of my existence when I find them in every room of the house. I mean every room. It gives the boys hours of enjoyment. They cost so much money for something that stays in one piece for maybe a week but took hours to build. So for his birthday this year, naturally we had a Lego themed birthday party with Connor and six of his closest friends.

So Saturday was wake up, make Connor his birthday breakfast, which is the same as his normal Saturday breakfast, my pancakes (mine are the best) and bacon. Clean the house (why we cleaned before we unleashed 7 7-year olds in the house was beyond me), go to swim lessons. While Mandy picked up pizza and cupcakes for the kids. We got home from swimming and got ready for the party. This is what the counter looked like before the party.

Yes those are faces on cups made to look like Lego heads. Mandy went above and beyond on this one. What you don’t see is the ice in the shape of Lego blocks and figures (it’s hard to get a picture of ice. Well at least small ice).  Did you see the candy Lego bricks on the cupcakes? After the boys arrived, we fed them pizza, root beer, Sprite, Smarties, and then proceeded to the tenth level of hell. Yes, I said ten. When Dante was writing his Inferno, I am pretty sure the Lego Movie had not been made, or else he would have included it. The movie itself is fun, I really enjoy it. Seven seven year olds singing Everything is Awesome for the next two hours, yeesh. Getting them hopped up on soda, candy and popcorn before movie and Everything is Awesome may have been a mistake in retrospect. I kid of course, all the boys were great and there was only one puking incident, so that was a bonus. Not a bonus:

Not pictured is the Minecraft shirt and stuffed animal (ok the Minecraft stuff was fun). Yes this is what my week is going to consist of this week. Baseball and Lego’s.  For those that cannot see very well that is a Monster Fighter set, two Lego Movie sets and a Lone Ranger set. That is 1,620 bricks of fun. And that is just from Saturday. Ok, in the interest of fairness, Connor did do the 122 piece Lego, so it is only 1,498(wow math in my blog. Maybe I have grown up a little bit?).

Now we proceed to Sunday and the combined bday party for Connor and his uncle.

Holy mother, Mary and Joseph we’re adding 587 blocks of terror. For those keeping score that is now 2,085. Plus the two Mixels his Aunt got him, but again Connor stepped up and had those done before we left.

Here is Metalbeard, Castle Lego Movie (it can transform into a Castle hover craft thingy), two Mixels, two Micromanagers, and the extraction chamber. For all my bitching and moaning about how evil Lego’s are, last night made it all worth it. Connor wanted the Silver Mine Shootout set from the Lone Ranger built. I made him deal that if was good and cleaned the living room I would build it while watching the Hawks game (really they lose on the softest damn OT goal I have ever seen).  The building started well, until we opened the box and discovered six bags of bricks and two instruction booklets.  Those Lego pro’s out there know if you see two booklets your night is over.

It was the most fun I have ever had building a set. Connor was awesome. He would skip ahead and have the pieces ready to go. He separated all the bags into the different color piles. Three hours later the job was done. I had to finish the last bag by myself because, well there is still school tomorrow and it was 9 o’clock. We should have just let him stay up another 30 minutes. He kept opening the door to peek out to check the progress. Here is the finished product.

The best part of the whole endeavor, we were two hours into the project when Connor stops dead and says, “Papa, when you are done, Can I give you a giant hug?” Who says Lego’s are evil?