Since Calfgrit7 has to do “a lot” of writing for his second grade homework, I’ve asked him lately if he’d like to make a post to this site. But because he’d rather play with his Lego blocks than do “more homework,” I asked him if I could post one of his homework pieces. He agreed, and we chose a story he had to write using 10 of his spelling words (underlined in the below post). He wanted it clear that this story isn’t true — it’s just based on a true event. He had to make up parts to fit in his spelling words.

All spelling and grammar are Calfgrit7’s:

The Lego store

I went up a few stairs and ran fast to get to the Lego store. There was one cloud in the sky. I sow a flower and two branches and thar was a cool breeze. I saw a huge Lego sea manster, a huge Lego Dinosour and a huge Lego robot. Wen I steped onto the floor I Lego caslte sets and Lego star wars sets. After I pekt out 3 thangs I wanted to buy I built a cool race car and I slid it down a ramp.

The End

Lego Heaven

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Calfgrit7 has been looking through one of his tattered Lego catalogs picking out things to put on his Christmas list. An interesting thing about his obsession with Lego is that he’s mostly interested in just the mini people. He’s picked out several sets because, he admits, he wants the people in those sets.

He has sets from both the Star Wars and fantasy lines — starships, siege engines, etc. But after they’re put together (mostly by me, because they’re sometimes quite complicated), they end up, after a couple of weeks, in pieces. He and Calfgrit3 use those pieces to create all new things. They even often mix and match the people pieces.

The only set that hasn’t been broken down into it’s component parts and poured into the general pile is the Lego fantasy chess set — human knights and soldiers against the skeleton forces. This set Calfgrit7 has done well with keeping together, but he’s required our assistance at times to keep Calfgrit3’s hands off the toys. (I had similar troubles when I was younger.)

One time while Calfgrit7 was holding his Indiana Jones Lego character, he noticed the Han Solo Lego character in his catalog. “Dad,” he said excitedly, “Indiana Jones and Han Solo look just alike.”

I explained why they looked alike in real life, but I was impressed that not only were the faces the same in the Lego pieces, but Calfgrit7 was studying them closely enough to notice. He’s turning into a fine and attentive geek. Makes a daddy proud.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

One evening of our vacation in Disney World, we went to Downtown Disney. While Cowgrit and Momgrit went shopping at the World of Disney store (more like 3 stores), the Calves and I visited the Lego Imagination Center.

The first thing you see when you near the Lego store is the giant Lego constructs. The picture to the right shows the sea serpent and the t-rex. The serpent is actually in the water of the harbor — I’m told it is constructed of 2 million Lego pieces. The t-rex stands about 10 feet tall and its head occasionally moves from side to side. To get a sense of the scale in the picture, the rails in front of the serpent and dino are about four feet high.

Not pictured is a robot, that stands as tall as the dino, an ocean scene with a giant crab, shark, and fish, and a life-sized family of four with four dogs on leashes. All of these constructs are made of normal size Lego pieces — the dino looks like it’s made of large blocks, but they’re really just regular, small pieces put together to look like large pieces. All the statues are just awe-inspiring.

Inside the store is every Lego piece and set you can think of, including sets I have never seen in any other store. For instance, check out this picture of the Millennium Falcon — for $500. It is to scale with the standard Lego mini figures — Han, Chewie, Leia, and Obi Wan are sitting in the cockpit. (As a nod to all you other Star Wars geeks: Yes, I noted this is an odd grouping.)

Besides the Star Wars sets, there’s also all the Bionicles, Exowarriors, fantasy, and real-life sets all around, too. Plus there’s a metric butt-load of individual Lego pieces you can buy by the scoopful. You can also build your own mini-figs — three for $10.

Outside the store, under a big permanent shelter, are tables for open building. In the center of the tables are bowls of loose Lego pieces, and there were 20 or 30 kids around building any and every thing they could imagine. There’s also two sloped race tracks for testing your race car builds. After picking out a couple sets each to buy, my boys hung out building cars and racing them with other kids for probably an hour.

That is just an amazingly cool store. I wanted to build and play too, but there was just too much going on for me to get distracted from paying attention to the boys. So I enjoyed the experience vicariously through my sons.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Fshew. We’re back. We’re tired. We’ve had about as much fun as we can stand. Our 6-day/7-night vacation at Disney World was a lot of fun. The hurricanes in the Atlantic gave us no problems — had to drive through a couple hours of rain on the way to DW, and had about 4 hours of rain on Thursday at the Magic Kingdom, but that was it.

Every day was packed morning to night with action and adventure, and I have a ton of stuff I’d love to blog about. Although I could probably fill a month’s worth of posts, I’ll try to ration them out instead of flood the site with my thoughts and observations on this one event. But here are a couple little funnies:

We had just, two minutes ago, stepped off a ride that Calfgrit7 exclaimed was was “great” and “cool” and “awesome.” Now he was saying, “This place is boring.” TWO MINUTES between scream-laughing fun and whining boredom. Is that a record?

We were actually still standing in front of the restaurant where we had just eaten a buffet meal, and Calfgrit3 announced, “I’m hungry.” Two minutes between all the food he could possibly eat and hunger. Sadly, that is not a record for him.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com