[How] Are You Sleeping (through all this racket)?

Dear John,

You have been sleeping really well lately.

I don't really understand this as your dad and I have been making a lot of noise in the evening... the sort of noise that our parents used to swear kept a person awake... the sound of legos scrapping against each other, that "krrsh, krrsh, krrsh" noise.

How did you parents, two respectable adults turn back into pre-teens staying up into the night playing with legos?  Well, you remember my Christmas gift to myself.

Diagon Alley

A few days after Christmas, your dad and I started assembling the Diagon Alley set.  It was so much fun that it made us want to build the old Hogwarts set, and then Hagrid's Hut.  Then your dad and I reminisced about the old King's Castle we both had as kids.  So your dad built that.  Pretty soon we were looking up Lego plans on-line and realizing that our sets would be so much nicer to build if we had all of the parts together and the only way to do that would be to sort through all of the legos and build those sets.  So we did.  Night after krrshing krrshing night.  And you slept through it all.

Diagon Alley was so enormous that it came in bags labeled in three groups.

It also had three separate instruction booklets (which is what enabled your dad and me to each build our own part.)

Lego directions have become a lot more direct -- see, item 1, don't build legos in the grass, use a table and item 2, don't mix the bags they so carefully separated for you.

And also, don't throw lego pieces -- even those that look like balls -- at anyone's head.

Building Gringot's

Building Olivander's

We loved all of the detail work in the set -- look a lego chandelier.

Diagon Alley - complete!

This is when I realized that the lego building was not something my husbad was doing to humor me -- all of those sets so carefully set out on the piano and I was not the one who did the detail work!

Diagon Alley -- alive and well in my living room!

Sorting through Legos to build Hogwarts -- this is when we realized it would take a lot of sorting to find all of those unique pieces. 

I found this one!

Hogwarts 4709 (released in 2001)

These small sets were some of the first Harry Potter lego sets -- there was one of Diagon Alley with Hermione, Ron with the Griffindor common room and bedchamber and Harry with Hogwarts classrooms.

The end goal for all of the sets is to have them in gallon bags with all of their pieces and their directions.

So this is what a bin of random legos looks like.

Sorted by color.

Doors and Windows -- there were also bags for wheels, steering wheels, people, weapons, horses, cups, frying pans, gem stones, boats, and greenery

The old King's Castle, circa 1984

John helping to pull brown pieces out of the gray and black bin.

Building Hagrid's Hut

Hagrid's Hut

King Leo's Castle (2000)

When rebuilding the Western set (1996), I found the original decals for the bank and general store that had never been applied, so I went ahead and did that step.

Legorado, as we like to call the cowboy set takes up an entire shelf in the playroom.

A more close up look at Legorado

The next set we did was the Adventure set (which was not the Indiana Jones set as Lego did not have rights to Indian Jones in 1998, so it was just a set with an adventuring dude in a brown hat looking for artifacts with a old man with glasses while villains with eye patches tried to stop them.  Once again, not Indiana Jones.

WWI era aircraft -- very cool -- and further proof that this is not Indiana Jones -- everyone knows that the real Indiana Jones fights Nazis!

Up close look at the Adventure set

In the midst of other Lego building, there were some sets on minor markdowns at Target.  Most weren't worth it, especially right after Christmas, but this little blacksmith shop looked neat and it seemed like a fun idea to build this new blacksmith shop and then go back and look on-line for the directions for the old blacksmith shop.

6918 Blacksmith Attack - 2011

6040 Blacksmith Shop -  1984

It was interesting seeing the two sets side by side.  The old set was certainly more basic.  It didn't even have moving parts where the new on had a "water" wheel that when turned hits the hammer which taps the knife on the anvil.  On the other hand, the old set holds such charm and nostalgia for me.  How could I pick a favorite between them?

Fairly easily, actually.  Only the new one came with a Lego chicken.  Bock!  Bock! Bock!  Did someone say "Lego chicken"  Isn't it funny what they are coming out with now?  And yes, I kept it in the bag.  Of course I did.

All the King's Horse and all the King's Men... I just had to do that

The whopping two "modern" sets I own -- I built them mostly because I was tired of running across the dozen or so light pink pieces that came with the cabana.  I remember buying that set and honestly, I bought it because at the time, the pretty female face was so rare and you could not buy it with mini-fig packs and somehow that made the set worth it to me.  I hope in retrospect that it was on clearance.

I know this may all be very strange to you.  I suppose most parents don't wait until the kids are in bed to build legos.  I also suppose that someday you will look at these sets and realize that although the 1984 sets make perfect sense to have been part of your "born in the 70's" parents' lives, if you do the math on the late 90's sets, you will quickly realize that your parents were in college at the time.  In fact, that was right around the time we met.

Everyone experiences childhood in different ways, and I guess for your dad and me, legos and gaming were two "childhood" pasttimes that we just didn't outgrow the way some people do.

So I know that to you, right now, it looks like your parents are actually being a little mean, having toys out and not letting you and your sister play as much as you want.  A few years down the road, it may look like you have the weirdest parents on the block.

But I hope some day you are able to see these holiday of lego building for what it really was for your dad and me -- a trip back to the time in college when we met and realized that we had found, in each other, a person who would not only refrain from mocking out inner child, but who we could play with for years to come.

Love,
Mom