Legomania, the return

Friday 12th April

26 photos to log today's adventure. A return trip to Legomania at the Living History Museum in Basingstoke.  A long car journey for us but one filled with innumerable questions and conversations, music and stories both

 there and back again. And this time a small diversion as we took a wrong turn on the way there, thank God for smart phones. I'm going to talk through the photos today and try my best to remember a great day out.

First photo is Tower Bridge made from lego, as most things are in this photo account. I make a point of saying it is Tower  Bridge as the man next to me was telling his kid that it was London Bridge. Now i know that I don't know everything in the world but when your standing next to something and your telling your children that it is one thing and another adult is telling their child it is another and they are within ear shot you find yourself a) questioning your knowledge and b) having to justify what you are telling your own smalls. I had to double check with daddy when we arrived home as it really threw me!

The second photo is Bean standing next to the displayed photo of his competition entry Fire engine. He was feeling very happy and a little surprised to see something he had made up on the wall. I guess it's still a little abstract how an emailed photo appears somewhere else.

My personal favourite of all the lego models were from the Lord of the Rings set and I'm secretly harbouring a desire to own the hobbit house!

And below, the reason for the return journey, to see the model truck, that when we first went was only two wheels. They had had a small mishap with the steering wheel section but we wouldn't have known this unless a museum official had told us, it just looked like they were finishing the last section. In fact, a child had explored the truck a little too closely and accidentally broke this section. I'm glad we had seen it nearer the beginning of the project as it was quite difficult to tell that it was in fact made from lego and with the absence of the craftsman it attracted less interest. 

The museum was decidedly busier than our previous visit, due to the fact that it was the Easter holidays. We had pre booked which helped with a quicker and guaranteed entrance and inside the crowd disperserd considerable but not entirely and I was struggling to keep tabs on Pumpkin. Amongst other things we stopped to take this photo of him just in case we found ourselves parted and we had to call on assisstance to help locate each other. He has a wonderful, and inherited, habit of stopping when something catches his eye, without warning or announcement or changing direction to satisfy his curiosity of what is around the corner! We didn't lose each other but I must have said numerous times, 'where's Pumpkin?'

We took a matching photo of Bean to match.

Bean took this photo of the inside of Westminster Abbey. I love the mini figures in the crowd. No ordinary attendees here, aliens, witches, wizards, builders, spacemen and deep sea divers, to name but a few add character and a little quirkiness to the exhibit.

The Star Wars models, again, took most of our time and attention. Lots of questions about different scenes and characters and close observations of details in each exhibit. The rotating Death Star taking most of our time and repeat looks.  

Our friends posted photo on FB today of them standing next to a space shuttle, so I couldn't resist taking this photo as we saw a space shuttle of our own (not quite the same but as good as it gets for now) We had missed this section on our previous visit and really only knew it was here because of other blog posts we have read. It did mean that we had additional reasons to return and gave us something new to look at which brought something new to the day. We also found these table top lego activities, some of which the boys did with enthusiasm and others they left.

We had also missed the olympic stadium before and Bean was really impressed with it. He managed to locate the podium and identify the sport being presented for and loved identifying the other sports on the field, although he was a little put out that they had included a skateboarder! He also liked the detail on the back of the stadium as they had included the steps to the seating, 'just like we walked up.'

Pumpkin was far more taken with the other things that the museum had to offer, hence the wandering. This bus actually allowed you on and the boys explored the interior for some time. In the picture below, we found Pumpkin sitting on the curb pondering the need for road work barriers as, 'you could still walk over those bricks. it would only be a little bit bumpy.'

The lego building section saw us returning to the pyramid building theme that had begun on our previous trip. Both boys built a pyramid and Pumpkin filled his with treasure. The board below shows a house that Pumpkin built, flat onto the board and a house that Bean began to build 3d. 

Pumpkin moved to his own duplo table as soon as one became available and built this river and bridge. Again, a repeat theme from our previous visit and not one that has been replicated at home.

Bean's two story house.

And finally, just before we left, a trip down the arcade aisle. There was a lot more happening here this time as the volume of people meant more games were in use. There was a definate divid in the things that interested the smalls. Pumpkin was drawn to the electronic shows and mechanical puppetry where as Bean was trying to work out how to play the games.

We shot home to be met by grandma and Pops who have come to stay with the boys for the weekend as mummy and daddy ( and Plum) go to a wonderful little house we know to spend the weekend in their annual celebration of their wedding anniversary. There have been, in the past 24 hours, protests from both the boys about us going but as soon as they saw Grandma and Pops and the Easter eggs and the box of Coco pops and the promises of adventures for the weekend, all such objections were gone and they both said goodbye very happily. So I left them settled and happy and headed off with Plum to pick daddy up from work.