lego excitement!

It was kind of a crap day around here on the adult front. One of those Bermuda Triangle days, where every small appliance, or mechanical anything that you touch suddenly and inexplicably breaks down. Seriously, in the space of one day my iron died (which is super annoying because as a quilter I use it, like every single day) the dishwasher leaked a small and minorly catastrophic creek of hot, dirty water across the kitchen floor (I know, we are lucky to have a dishwasher, it came with the place, and I have a feeling it is a limited time offer) and then when I got into the car to drive over to the store to buy a functioning iron (because seriously, every. single. day) the car turned on for a second and then, click, was completely dead. I was, to use the vernacular, loosing my shit. Oh, and also I was billed and required to pay for a product that I never used or received but that is another story. Anyhow, the point is that I felt broke, and my house felt filled with broken stuff which, since I am broke I clearly would never be able to afford to replace.

But this feeling only lasted until the Little Dude came home from school because then my feeling of "failing to be an adult who can handle life and small appliances" was completely displaced by the LD's loud, exuberant, ecstatic feelings of "OHMYGOSHNEWLEGO!!!!!" There was no room left in the house for any sad feelings because LEGOEXCITEMENTLEGOEXCITEMENTLEGOLEGOLEGO was the predominant emotion in the air until I finally hosed that child down and put him to bed.

You see, Hubs was cleaning out the garage and found a box of old lego. Yeah, I have no idea how he could have forgotten he had a box of lego out there, since we have a child who lives and dies for lego, but he figures he must have found/bought it before L.D. hit his lego window, and it simply did not register as important to him at that time. Anyhow, it is CLEARLY very important now, so when L.D. got off the bus, Hubs showed him the large cardboard box of random old lego pieces and L.D. practically levitated off the ground with excitement.

So they had to get down to work right away. They started by dumping it all in the bath because that lego was filthy! You should have seen the water when they were done.

And then they swished it and swooshed it around which was very, very satisfying. Lego in the water is a great tactile experience.

And then they pulled out handfuls at a time and sorted the sheep from the goats, er, I mean the lego from the megablocks. Because we are lego snobs. And we put the Little Dude to work drying off the "special pieces" that he found, which he needed to play with/claim and hoard right now, and could not possibly wait for it to air dry.

Even the Little Guy helped by collecting the things that were neither lego nor megablocks; marbles and toy soldiers and such. I'll tell you it was a very full bathroom.

Not only was it full of people, and full of lego, but mostly it was full of JOY! And noise of course, because when you are six those two things go hand in hand. This was the best picture I could get of the Little Dude as he jumped up and down, plunging his hands into the water to grab a "cool piece" that he'd spotted amongst all the regular bricks, his voice full of capitals and italics and brimming with exclamation marks. "MOM! a SKELETON! With a cool different kind of face then the skeleton we already HAVE! LOOK! a SPIDER! and a BAT! MOM! we can make a whole HAUNTED HOUSE with this stuff! Like Lord Vampyre's Castle, only better!" Mom, MOM! TWO orange tracks and I think I saw the WHEELS in there that go WITH it!"

Good Lord that child is loud. I wonder where he gets it? (she says ironically)

And now, at the end of the day we have a beach towel laid out on the floor, covered with drying lego bricks as well as two skeletons, a bat, a spider, lots of tusks/horns, seven-eighths of a dragon (missing the head, more's the pity, but never fear, there's definitely a decapitated dragon story line to be acted out there) some orange tractor tracks, lots of wheels, etc, etc. Oh, and a very dirty tub.

And I don't think I even need to say it, given the picture above, but obviously, one very excited little boy.