Saturday: extra day - part 1

Ben and I had one more day in Denmark.  When planning the trip we had debated about this extra day, but we were really glad that we had it.  While Legoland ended up being fun but a normal theme park, we hadn't finished Lego House.

So after breakfast we...first had our picture taken with a MiniFig.

Then we wandered over to the Lego House.  We finally got our picture taken in front with the bricks.

We started out in the fish emotion area.  This was one of my favorite spots, although the scanner didn't work quite right and that was rather annoying.  (It would have been an easy fix for the scanner too!)  Anyway, I made two fish.  The first one had a longer tail than what was scanned.  (I also made a teeny, tiny fish and that wouldn't scan at all.)  Below is the scanner with my second fish/squid.  The large size of my squid made it work pretty well.

And Ben's:

Once they're scanned in they pop out of a pipe and start swimming happily...until something happens.

Next up were flowers.  I love seeing Lego flowers and have always thought I should make them.  The limited pieces gave me a nice starting point, and I was able to make my first one!  The only sad thing about this area was that the pieces were far away from the sitting area.

I was really happy with how my flower turned out.

The next section I had a bit of a harder time getting into.  You made jumpy creatures that then went down a vibrating hill or "danced" on a vibrating plate.  The dancing was interesting, but I felt like I didn't know what the goal was when making my creature...I didn't even realize it was supposed to be a creature and so I didn't love it properly.  This was probably more my problem than anything, but it was what it was.

The next part of this little area worked a bit better for me.  We made frogs on lily pads and then put them in a lake that was an air table and they floated around.

My frog ended up with a few too many pieces, but otherwise I liked how it turned out.

We found an outside spot!  There an an outside spot for every zone...we didn't find all of them, and some where better than others.  It's mainly a small play ground of sorts, although the ones we saw did seem to be quite different.  We didn't stay long...Legos work well with our adult minds but we didn't really need to play on the play equipment.

The last thing we needed to do was make a stop-motion movie.  (Really, we should have done this on Friday.  It was getting very, very busy in the house by this time.  This wait wasn't too bad, but by the time we left (you get 20 minutes) the line was quite long.)  Ben and I had plans for this poor guy to be thrown into the water by all sorts of things, but it turns out the moving in small increments you can't really do much in 20 minutes.


At this point we had done everything in Lego House.  (Although I heard there was a mosaic lab that we missed.)  We wanted to do the robot mammoth driving again, but the line was too long.  So we made some apartment buildings.  Below you can see that I put mine in a spot that made a lot of people happy...the red people were looking for a place to live.

 Ben's:

We tried making our way downstairs to eat, but kept getting distracted...

We finally made it down to the cafe, only to find that the wait was over an hour.  It's too bad, because they have some robots that help with your meal.  You order using different blocks and it comes out in a Lego brick container.

We had at least been able to see these guys at the first designer dinner.  A lady was explaining the food and the robots were just waving their arms behind her, almost like they were making fun of her.  Ben and I found it hilarious, no one else seemed to crack a smile.

Every day that you go to Lego house you get a unique 6-block combination.  There are around 915 million combos that you can make with six bricks 2x4 bricks.  (This got mentioned many times.  This is also why they can say "The possibilities are endless."  Imagine what you could do with five red blocks and a green block!)  Anyway, they print out a card with your combination and you can get a set of 6 red 2x4 blocks that are made right there.  I don't think I got a picture of the machine, but it was cool.

Ok, this post got long too so I'm going to split it up.

Friday afternoon: day 3b

After we were done with the official tour we went to explore Lego House.  It is awesome.  It is very well thought out (see the previous post).  Almost everything worked, which is sometimes the problem with museums.

Ben and I decided to go in the history portion first.  It was the one spot that the morning tour didn't cover, and we were curious as to what it looked like.  There was a good reason the tour didn't go to it; it was pretty much the same info that we had on the first day of the tour, just in a different form.  However, Ben and I still enjoyed looking at all the different sets because we had been rushed through that part earlier.

Then back upstairs to look at the dinosaurs.  As with any art, you see different things each time you look at it.

We found some friends swimming in the Duplo pool and decided to join them.  (Well, "join" them...we all took turns because there was a bit of a hole after the first person that made it easier to swim in.  When laying down they don't hurt.  The hardest part was actually getting any leverage to move around.)

Then we made things with the 2x4 bricks.  Ben made a dragon, but it was hard to move.  So I made an apple and a ham, so I could throw them at the dragon.  (Remember the sign from the hotel a few days ago?)  I also made a tree.

Then we went to the test track.  This was not my favorite part, but probably because my cars didn't work very well.  Ben managed to get a car through the goal though!

Then we went to the city builder.  I was about to say it was my favorite, but then I remembered some of the others.  It's in the top three at least.  We wanted to make a park, but there were no green squares left.  I asked the helper for more, and he happily got some but asked me to hold his...uh...skeleton dragon?  The name started with an E.

Anyway, then we made our parks.  Oh, I didn't get a good view of mine.  They grey thing is a bridge.  I figured out later that the 45deg angle works better for pictures.

Mine is the one in the one on the land bridge and I think Ben's is the one above it.  He didn't use their cool picture thing to take many pictures this day to help him remember what he made.  Joining us were Birgit, Alice, and Mart.

Then we used robots to save minifigs that were saving mammoths!  (I wanted to do this the next day too, but the line was too long.)  Everyone has a robot that has Boost controls (so you can put in a series of actions) and you need to get to a frozen minifig and shoot fire at them.  Sometimes you need to make an ice bridge.  It was a lot of fun.

Moving to the green area!  Make a mini-fig of yourself.  I made two.  Normal Amanda with scissors (for cutting fabric) and fearless Amanda.  Ben made his too (and took a picture!) but I don't know the story behind it.

Then we looked around the three Lego builds for a while.  They were amazing, with so much little detail.

They regularly had Duplo sections so that families with younger kids would also have a place to play and the family could move through the house together.  The forest was transitioning into Duplo, which was right by that Duplo play area.

This was one of my favorites:

Then the house closed.  On the way out I made a tile for the mosic.  I wasn't really sure what it was, but it turned out to be the top of a hand.

After a rest at the hotel were I starting packing and realized we might not have enough room to get everything home, we went to dinner.  (The Insider Tour sets were quite a bit bigger than I thought they would be.  The night before I was like, "no problem!  I'm not sure we bought enough!"  and this night I was like, "We might need to leave some clothes behind.")

After talking at dinner for a while, I went to the restroom.  It, as everything, was nicely themed.

Here's the group!  After the tour I got to know two more people well...Colin (yellow shirt, Netherlands) and Rebecca (plaid shirt, Texas).

Wednesday: snake

Joshua finished his snake this morning.  It was all he could talk about for most of the day.

Also, as I was downstairs I realized something!  Our luggage shelf is clean!  It might be the only place in the house that's clean, but at least there's one place.

So yeah...still tired.  Especially if I find an empty shelf funny.

Tuesday: exhausted

Well, yesterday was one busy day.  I woke up at 4am.  (Today I woke up at 5am, so based on the trend I'll be back to normal by Friday.  We found it easier going to other way since we pretty much just missed a night of sleep.)  Although it's a bit annoying waking up so early, I also get a lot done before the boys wake up!  I'm a morning worker.  I've known this for a while, but since we've had kids it doesn't always work very well.  (This also means I'm a night not-worker, which is when I relax and do my hobbies.  It's also important.)

Anyway.  After all the work at home and went to real work.  I picked up the boys and dealt with construction by Isaac's school.  The internet said they're repaving the road and "it might be some time" before it's done.  At home I continued my work, because there's a lot to do.  I brought Isaac to karate, I made dinner, I went to karate.  I ate dinner while crashing and reading and directing children.  I did some of my computer work.

And then I crashed.  Completely.  I went to sleep at the same time as the boys.  I don't even remember moving my book back to the night stand.  I do remember Ben coming to bed, but that was about all.