Sunday: breaking Isaac

Ben, Isaac, and I played a quick game of Can't Stop this evening.  It really was fast, because I won 3-0-0.  The rule in our house is that the winner has to put the game away.  When I lose I often feel better because of this rule and when I win I'm still happy because I won.

Anyway.

Because I won so well, Isaac was trying to figure out a new rule that basically said if you skunk everyone else you should also have to clean up the game by yourself.  The conversation went something like this.

Isaac: "If you win, you win." *Thinking*

Ben and I look at each other and burst out laughing.  "Oh phew.  If you win then you win."

This set Isaac off into spurts of laughter, but he made a valiant attempt to continue.

Isaac: "If the players have zero points, then they don't have any points."

Ben and I again: "Thanks for the clarification.  This is enlightening."

Isaac, barely able to talk at this point: "No, if all the players who didn't win have zero points then the player who won..."

Ben: "The winner has one point.  I don't think you understand the game."

Isaac gave up, laughing uncontrollably.

vacation Tuesday (June 9) part 1: LEGO house

Today's big activity was to return to LEGO house.  After seeing and doing several things yesterday I wasn't sure if we would stay all six hours that it was open but it was a foolish worry and we easily stayed the whole time.

After another delicious breakfast we moved hotels...to one a five minute walk away.  I know that one of our Japan lessons was to not move hotels as often and we really didn't.  However, this was the LEGO castle hotel and 1) it's fun and 2) the deal we got included tickets to Legoland for the next day.  We were also able to sleep five in a room and while it wasn't a ton cheaper because of that, it was a little cheaper.  On our way over to the hotel I once again grabbed Ben's suitcase instead of own.  I haven't mentioned it yet but throughout the airport I kept grabbing Ben's suitcase instead of mine.  His is a dark blue while mine is a light blue, but for some reason I kept seeing only "blue" and grabbing the wrong one.  Joshua got in on it a bit and switched them on purpose a few times, but I genuinely did it on accident.  I'm sure Ben noticed right away because 1) it was the wrong color and 2) his travels in a straighter line than mine.

We dropped off our luggage and went to LEGO house.  This statue was on our walk, although we didn't go up close to it.  The playline on the way to the LEGO house from this direction was SO much better!  When we walked the other way around the loop most of it was just a straight line on the edge of the sidewalk.  On this part of the loop it actually had interesting features.

We got there a little early so that Ben could deal with shipping the sets we had purchased the day before.  The kids and I went up the yellow stairs.  Well, when it isn't too late there is a door at the top of the yellow stairs that you can go through. (We saw it on the blue stairs the day before, but it was closed.)  So we went up another set up steps.  

Then another.  

And another.  And we made it to the top!  It looks like a LEGO brick, obviously.

Then we went down the blue side.  It started raining.  It had been heavily misting earlier, but it was actual rain at this point.  There's not much one can do at the top of a building, so we just went all the way down.  We weren't soaked and dried off pretty quickly.

Isaac...did something while Joshua made a castle with the large bricks while we waited for Ben and Cheryl and for the main area to open.  Then Joshua noticed kids nearby making the word LEGO and looking for blue bricks, so he helped them find some.  To me, this is one of the core teachings of Lego...learning through play.  In this instance, it was specifically collaboration.

There were a few main places we wanted to get to before the main crowd showed up, so we flitted around a bit.  It isn't a super large place, so this wasn't an issue.  We started with the bee robots.  (This used to be ice robots.)  Each person had a robot that could plant seeds, water the seeds, or get water from a puddle.  When the flowers had bloomed, the bees would collect pollen to make honey.  It was rather Robot Turtles like.  "Go forward three units.  Plant seeds.  Turn."  "Go forward one unit, get water.  Turn 180, go forward one unit, water plants."  You could make your instructions as long or short as you wanted to.  Our results were all pretty similar, although Ben got the most total items.  Some of us got more honey, some planted more flowers.

We made stop motion movies next.  I really like mine, although I made it super short and the rest of the family didn't understand it at first.  Isaac and Cheryl mostly finished theirs, while Ben and Joshua (who were working together) needed another minute so theirs cut off a bit early.  All the videos start around ten seconds - there's a lot of pre-video credits.  Information about the stories is below the videos.

Amanda:

Ben and Joshua:

Isaac:

Amanda: A woman with scissors approaches another woman, who is very scared.  The first woman acts scary but ends up just cutting the second woman's hair.  The woman loves the haircut.

Ben and Joshua: The woman dives off a dock and finds treasure.  The pirate sees the treasure and chases the first woman.  The first woman opens a secret door to escape, drinks a potion from a silver goblet and can fly.  Not shown is how she also has fire power now to defend herself.

Isaac: A policeman chases a pirate, catches him and puts him in handcuffs.  The policeman uses his wand to poof a boat into existence.  (It looks like an explosion, but that was the only special effect that was close to poofing-in.)

Saturday: life

It was a lovely Saturday.  LEGO in the morning.  Then Isaac and I went rock climbing while the air quality was ok and it wasn't too hot.  (Turns out it might not be "too" hot, but it was still really hot.)  Isaac pushes me to climb routes I wouldn't otherwise even try, so it's fun to climb with him.

I also got the kitchen almost clean.  I was able to find the counters for the first time in a week.  Joshua has kitchen week next week, so I need to give him a clean kitchen Sunday night.

A friend came over in the evening to play Root.  It's one of Isaac's favorite games, but is rather complicated and really works better with four people.  We've played it with three, but four is better.  Joshua is willing to play it once in a while, but only one of the four roles.  Anyway, our guest won this game and Isaac had a really rough game, but I think we all enjoyed it.

Friday: still no blueberries

While the air quality wasn't as bad today, it still hung around 350 for most of the day.  Therefore, we once again didn't get blueberries.  I'm optimistic for Monday.

So instead I did chores.  The kids entertained themselves pretty well, so I tried to catch up on stuff I ignored while painting.  I did clean up the painting stuff too.

For reference, where is what it used to look like (from a different angle, obviously).

Here is what it looks like now.  Both yellow walls were painted.

Thursday: no blueberries

Today we were planning on picking more blueberries.  Unfortunately, the wildfires put a dampener on that.  When we woke up the AQI was 250 and around 2pm I saw it spike at 513.  (Others saw it spike over 600 in Holland and Marquette was over 1000).  So we didn't go outside much.

I mostly finished touch-ups on the painting and hope to clean it up this morning.  I had a slight panic attach at noon when I realized that I never got a notification that my groceries, scheduled for pickup at 9am.  Their system was acting up, so I went to get them after lunch.

Horizon was at his happiest, being a game cat.  He messed it all up.  (We take pictures, so we can fix it up.)

vacation Monday, part 2 (June 8): LEGO tour

Everyone was hungry by then and we were back at Mini Chef for lunch.  We all chose different options and liked them, for the most part.  The veggies weren't a huge hit, but the main dishes were all really good.

Isaac was able to help order this time.

So, to order, you take a matching brick of what you want and build it into a flat tower in any design, as long as it's flat.  It gets scanned in the machine by putting it in that thing on the bottom right.  (You can see that in the left four masterpieces at the top of the picture.)  The order then goes on a journey to the kitchen so they can make your food.  Joshua however, carefully arranged his pieces in the scanning tray so that they weren't actually stacked and it was funny to see them floating throughout the animation.

While waiting for the food, you can play with your ordering LEGOs or red bricks.  Isaac made a creeper face.

Ben made a person.

Joshua made a BIG GORILLA in a hat.

We also put together our mini chefs while they were still in the bag.  The story from the waiter this time is that these are the bad mini chefs and they got fired.

We had the red-lidded boxes again.  I was hoping for a different color, but oh well.

Next they buseds us over to the factory.  This is one of my favorite parts.  I'm not sure why, but I really like seeing the molds release the pieces.  We got to see the automated bucket movers move around a little bit, but I didn't get to see them take a full bucket off a molding machine.  They did beep at our group a few times because we weren't close enough to the wall and couldn't get by.  They were making a lot of piece removers when we were there.  They only let us bring phones into the lobby, so there aren't many pictures from this part.

It's hard to smile when the sun is bright.

A model of the factory

A polar bear!  It was in someone's office so I couldn't get a picture with it, but it was really cute.

Our last part of the official tour was a tour of LEGO house after the other guests left.  We were told about the tree and the dinosaurs.  There were a bunch of really cool display pieces LEGO fans around the world have made, but this post is already picture heavy.  Oh, you might notice an ear bud...they had a microphone and gave us all receivers so that we could actually hear what was going on.  It was great.

In the imagination area we all made a duck.  I made an only yellow duck - there was one big tub of only yellow bricks.  Some people made a duck out of all colors but only bricks, and some people made a duck out of all elements and all colors.  I like my duck a lot, but I think I like Joshua's the most.

We moved the to track next and built a car for a single elimination race.  Ben won!  The last round was Ben vs. Ben and they had very similar cars, but my Ben had the weight on the back and the other Ben had it on the front.

We raced a bit through the last areas as we were short on time - we spent a little bit of time in Miniland, were given a description of emotion area and how our emotions can rub off on others, and then went back to our conference room.

We were all given one of the Billund special edition sets!  It's the one with a mini-build for the three building systems of LEGO: Duplo, (normal) Lego and technic.  Add that to the suitcase set, flower polybag, Duplo rainbow, and assorted little things (times 4 for each of us) and we ended up with a nice haul.

This officially ended the tour, but they kept the store open for us after everyone else had left.  Along with a bunch of Billund-exclusive sets, they had some out-of-print Brinklink Designer program sets.  We missed a few of them that looked nice, and so once again, we ended up with a bunch of boxes.  We decided to ship these home, along with the large sets that we were given, because we were at the beginning of our trip and not the end.  If it had been the end of the trip we would have brought extra bags and packed the sets out of the boxes, but it just wasn't practical for us this time.

We ended up at a pizza place for dinner.  It was ok.

On the way home the kids played on some of the sculptures on the sculpture walk, but then half way home the kids and I realized we really, really had to go to the bathroom.  We booked it home and left Ben and Cheryl to catch up on their own.

The city was beautiful.  It had a ton of things that children were allowed to play on and interesting cityscaping.  We joked several times that it seemed as though this trip was for playgrounds with other things in between.

In front of the lion house!  This was the family home and workshop of the founder of LEGO.

I have no idea what we did for the rest of the night.  I don't have anything in my notes or in my pictures.  My guess is that we took showers and went to bed, but I can't confirm that.  

We knew that Giraffe like to sit on heads, but I never quite realized how much he sleeps on Isaac's head until this trip.