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.

Friday morning: day 3a

The last day. :(  We had tour stuff for the first half of the day and then the tour officially ended.

We started out with a tour of Lego House.  This place is amazing.  (I think the only not amazing thing was how busy it was on Saturday.)  Stuart, one of the tour leaders, is one of the main model builders and gave half the tour.

We started out at the tree.

There are several branches that can hold scenes.  I missed the space one, but the astronaut from "The Martian".  They put some messages in it and my favorite was "we come in pieces."

Then we saw the dinosaurs in the top portion.  They were awesome, and we found out that on Easter one of each egg had hatched.  (If you look at the dinosaur lego set, there are still two eggs.)

There is the Duplo dino, who is the most fun.  There are animals making up a lot of his detail.

There is the normal Lego dino, who has a lot of color texture and much smoother lines than many Lego sculptures.  But at the end of the day, we saw so many cool things out of Lego that he was just normal.  The baby was pretty cute though!

All the adults are also stepping on a Lego block, like all poor parents.

The last one is Technic Dino.

The room that the dinosaurs are in is a giant brick.  The skylights are the studs and the lights are the inside cylinders.  This was a change suggested by the Lego community so that if aliens come they will know what the building is.

The whole building is centered around play, and does a great job of combining learning with play (a core value, that we heard several times.)  I forget what the red competency is, but it is basically free play.  There are three different areas.  An area by the waterfall with all sorts of bricks  and this produces very detailed designs.  There is an area with only 2x4 bricks, and this starts to make more pixelated, less detailed designs.  The last area is one that only has yellow 2x4 bricks and this makes very large, abstract designs.  The other thing to note is that they never take down all of the creations.  That leaves the slate too blank and kids don't know what to do.  Also, if they leave some up they often find that other people will make another creation that goes with it.

The blue area had a test track, a city builder, and a robot game (not shown yet).  The test track was what is found in many Lego areas.

The city builder was super cool.  You get a little square, you make the type of building on it (i.e., if you have a green square you make a park, if you have a red square you make an apartment) and then you put it on a light table.  There are little people running around, looking for different things, and if you put it near them you get a star and all the people come to use it.

Green area: an amazing miniland and  a stop motion video maker

(This is a robot tearing down a building.)

The yellow section (emotions) had a flower making area and a fish making area.

The fish area you would make a fish, scan it, and then it would swim in the tank.  Every two or three minutes there would be an animation, and you would empathize with your fish.  The first animation said it was feeding time and all the little fish we had made circled up and wiggled excitedly.  Then the big manta ray came and ate all the food and now I might be scarred for life I was so sad for our little fish.

Back to the room for the unveiling of this years special insider tour set (that most people knew about.)

But first!  A quick presentation about building instructions (which I found very interesting) and sustainability (which I also found very interesting).  They are looking at ways to move away from the poly-bags that are in all the boxes.  We got to see some of the things they've tried; it's mostly paper.  But with paper you need to worry about the bricks poking holes in the bag.  Put on a plastic coating?  Well, that seems to defeat the point.  How many holes are ok?  They are also looking at ways to make more environmentally friendly Lego bricks.

They then talked a lot about the making of our Lego set.  Stuart was the designer, but there was a lot of history involved in it too.  There used to be a page about the history, but now the only thing I can find is the original picture. (From https://www.lego.com/r/www/r/catalogs/-/media/catalogs/articles/lego%20history/article%20photos/company/8%20early%20expansion/systemhouse_inauguration_1958-original.jpg)

The coolest parts of the set are 1) They are very limited editions.  2) There is a unique to this set part.  It was made using 3D printing as they wanted to see if a different technique for making the element could be used.  Since it was a low volume run, it was a good time to try it out.  3) Our picture is on the back.  This means that we'll be in the Lego archives!  I apparently didn't take a picture at the time, so here are some more recent ones.

(And so that I can remember who signed where...)

Then farewell to the leaders.

A few more photos, a survey, getting the boxes signed, and such.  

We met a bunch of lovely people, but the ones that we seemed to click the most with were Alice (US) and Birgit (Austria)...

...and Emma and Mark (Australia).  

Well, this is turning into a long post.  I just decided to turn it into two.