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.

Tuesday: boat

Larry brought us and some friends out in the boat for a sunset cruise.  It was the perfect night for it!

A few of us went for a swim in Lake Michigan.  Ben was going to join Andy, but then I forgot his swimsuit bottoms.  (It really was my fault too.  He had a different pair in his hands but I told him I had his good swimsuit.)

The temperature of air and water was great, the sunset was great, and the friends were great.  What more could you ask for?

Monday: painting

Today was painting day!  Isaac was willing to help, so he was on roller duty and I was on edges.

While we weren't overly fast, we took about as long as I was expecting.  The primer took us a bit over three hours and the first paint layer a bit under three hours.  We both missed a few spots with the new paint, but we still have another layer.  It was a bit hard going from primer to paint, but it seemed to dry darker than when it was put on.  So hopefully the last layer tomorrow will be a bit easier to see where we missed (or not).

Sunday: lake

This afternoon we went with friends on Lake Mac.  Larry and Cheryl let us use their house as home base.  One family rented a boat and had tubing gear, so all the kids and I went tubing.  I love tubing.  I goal was to be thrown off the tube.

Well, I had one foot on the tube as I was getting on and fell in the water.  Goal achieved!  I fell off twice more and it was amazing.  The last time I fell off during a turn that wasn't all that hard, but it was on the end of a series of ones that really caused me to hold on tightly and my hands were tired.

I also tried the eFoil.  I didn't do great, but for my first time on it it wasn't too bad.  I tried riding on my knees, but then my legs got really sore.  Sitting on the board was much better.  I made several small circles and had a hard time staying at the same height throughout the ride.

Vacation Monday, part 1 (June 8): LEGO tour

Today was tour day!

We started out with a great breakfast again.  I saw something called student bread and grabbed a piece.  The pieces were small  (1" cubes) and so sweet.  It was a pastry crust, what tasted like the jelly part of a Danish, and topped with small layer of frosting and sprinkles.  Apparently it's supposed to be a way to use up extra ingredients, but I had it two days and it was the same both times so I'm not sure that's the case anymore.

We walked to the LEGO house this time - it's about a twenty minute walk.  We got there a few minutes early so climbed the blue stairs.  Last time we were here I went half way up the yellow stairs for a picture and I regretted not climbing all over the outside of the house.  (To be fair, there just wasn't time.)

We started by building ourselves out of minifigures.  I choose a bag (because I'm the person that carries the bag when we travel) and a donut. Ben had wanted a surfboard and got one passed to him too.  There were two people named Ben and they both had Benny shirts on.  Isaac was wearing the LEGO shirt he made in art and got several compliments on it.

Our first tour stop was the museum.  It's interesting to hear the stories behind LEGO company - the founding, the ups, and the downs.

LEGO comes from LEg Godt, which translated is 'Play Well'.

The original ducks LEGO made:

Transitioning from wooden toys to plastic building bricks.

The patent (and our guide, a LEGO historian)

A cat!

I really liked this vase, although I expect that the lighting and case color helped a ton.  Also, I noticed that nothing was dusty and then one person on the tour asked about that...it is the responsibility of the history department to keep it clean.)

Then we went to the vault.  It had moved since the last time we were here and it was so much nicer.  Before it was in crank shelves and everyone had to be in the same few rows as everyone else and it was in the basement.  Now it was up higher so there were windows and natural light and there were stationary shelves with wide rows.  We found several different interesting sets.

With set 1!

Browsing

Joshua looked at most of the Minecraft sets

This set, the Minecraft mountain, was one that Isaac really wanted for years.  Unfortunately, by the time he realized it was a set it was retired and way too expensive.

Joshua with his first big set.

Cheryl with a favorite set.

Browsing.

While we never got this set, I made Isaac take a picture with it because for a period of time his favorite color was black and he was into all black everything.  We got a bulk LEGO of black pieces that he played with on the counter while I made dinner.

On the way back I had Ben take a picture of me by the window trees because I was wearing my tree shirt.