Jennifer's 365 Project

The 6 year old built a nether portal out of lego bricks for me.
 

He spent a chunk of the day building one of his gifts - a LEGO Minecraft pig house.

We spent a large chunk of the day outdoors, enjoying the weather. Later in the afternoon we started in on the brick laying, but we started late and didn't get terribly far. We have all spring and summer, so I'm in no huge rush.
A package from his Uncle Jeff arrived so we spent the evening assembling a fun Star Wars LEGO set. Overall it was as relaxing day and much needed extra recharge time.

I won't let Quinn have my Bag End hobbit hole. It's the one LEGO set I won't share with him. So we decided to make one for him. We didn't quite have all the round pieces, but I think we did pretty good.

We've all been enjoying the Harry Potter Lego Advent Calendar. Lots of fun little things to build. The 4 year old's favorite part is mini-figures for sure.

We spent part of the morning before I went to work building with LEGOs.

 Today Quinn and I assembled a lego set I've had - a Sleeping Beauty themed Lego friends.
The majority of the time he was trying out what I was assembling, which was lots of fun for both of us.
The finished castle breaks down into three parts pretty nicely, so he's had a lot of fun mixing and matching them. That's a very nice design choice by Lego.

I spent a part of the morning going through some basic arduino exercises. Blinking the light, controlling the intensity of the light with a light dependent resistor (LDR), etc.
In the early afternoon I assembled one of the most awesome LEGO sets I have ever owned - Shelob Attacks. As a special bonus, there were three precious in the pack so I made sure everyone got one - except Shelob.

I was mostly just excited to get a gollum LEGO.

In the morning it was already over 70 degrees outside, but that didn't stop me from enjoying a breakfast pita pizza and reading on the deck.
In the afternoon we took a walk over to Palmer Park and walked the various trails there. While I do enjoy the pine trees, my favorite bit is still the boardwalk.
We got home and I wanted to finally try my hand at the pinata cookies I stumbled across earlier this month, but quickly talked myself out of them again. They take 4 hours to chill in the fridge and honestly, I'm a little nervous about trying them.

Soon though!

Instead I started a new batch of home-made vanilla extract.
I grilled a few things for dinner and then assembled one of the most awesome LEGO sets ever. Gandalf arriving in the Shire.

I don't need all the sets. Honestly, once I get the Shelob set, I'll be satisfied. Unless, of course, they come out with some more awesome sets.

And you know they will.

Leki isn't a huge fan of deviating from the schedule. The older he gets, the more finicky he gets with slight changes. So when I came home today and booted up my work laptop to check on some things, he wasn't happy. Why isn't dinner being made yet?!

He first attempted to gain attention via the "aw, how cute" factor by rubbing up against my laptop and purring. When that didn't work he switched to plan B - destruction.

Leki is very aware of objects around him and he fixates on little things a lot. Tonights victim? A lego knight that was perched up on top of a small cabinet on my desk.

Poor knight made it away with just a small hole in his saliva-drenched cape.

Dinah is our 6 1/2 year old parakeet.  She's never had a history of being friendly with people but over the past year she's become increasingly tolerant of me and she flat out loves Chris.

She will screech incessantly when she wants his attention and she's always up for being handled and having her chest rubbed - by him.

So this weekend we finally set out on a mission; picking up an "away cage" for her.  Her normal cage is actually a cockatiel cage, so it's a little large and doesn't fit everywhere. Chris wanted to find something we can put her in (to protect her from an over zealous cat) and have her around while we are elsewhere in the apartment.

So far it seems like the system will work out well, once she is ok with the change in scenery.  She's willing enough to hop into a new cage, but the cat understandably makes her nervous.

We also spent part of the day out searching for more Lego Mini Figures. Here's a short video Chris put together of our adventures.  If you missed it, the first bit of our quest is here.

The day started quiet and uneventful enough.  For lunch Chris wanted to head over to Wendys, try their new french fries, and do some window shopping.  With nothing else on the docket, I said sure.

Since we were out, we swung by Meijer to pick up a few things and look at the lego minifigures.  They have small 1.99 packets of lego figures.  They're all different types and the bag is packaged so that you can't tell what's inside.

Anyway, here's what happened at our first stop.




So...as you can, not much success. He wasn't hung up on it, but I wasn't happy. Chris wanted a mime, so damnit we were going to find one! So off we went!





Yeah....

I tried to go back into the store but Chris talked me out of spending oodles on singers and weightlifters.