Checking Out BrickMagic

I'm posting this a week late, but seriously, last weekend was so busy - 3 big events in 3 days - that I took me a while to get back to normal and catch up with things around the house. I already talked about the Gotta Be NC festival we went to on Friday and the Henside the Beltline tour we went to on Saturday. Then there was Sunday and time to go to the LEGO BrickMagic festival.

Needless to say, M went there dressed as Boba Fett. This time he fit right in! Ok, so he was like the only one wearing a Star Wars costume, that's true. But pretty much everyone else was wearing Star Wars t-shirts. Ok, maybe not everyone, but like every third person. So geeky ruled the day (in the best sense of the word). Let me tell you, during the chicken tour we haven't met anyone who recognized M's costume. The closest we got was some guy who thought M was Jango Fett. Other guesses included Darth Vader (mostly) and even a Power Ranger or a robot. But at the BrickMagic not a single person was confused.

So as at any festival there were costume characters at this one. On the day that we went, there were three 501st Legion stormtroopers. The day before, we heard, Lord Vader himself made an appearance along with Boba Fett. I can't believe we missed this photo-op. How cool would that be - to have a picture of my little Boba shaking hands with the big Boba. Oh well, maybe next year. Honestly, we didn't even know beforehand that there'd be stormtroopers, so M was thrilled. He kept talking about how now he made friends with real stormtroopers!

Of course, there were lots of Star Wars builds, including the Battle on Hoth (for some reason that's one battle M's most fascinated with) and Pizza day at stormtroopers' cantina. There was also a huge Death Star being built, but we showed up too late and the build was close by then. Again, something to think about next year.

We also checked out a bunch of vendors. I'm particularly interested in finding a Lego club for M, but at his pace. For now we build at home. He can now read the diagrams and follow them most of the times. He does have a lot of trouble with very small parts and long builds. He is also getting more interested in independent builds, not from kits. So I am thinking about getting him some lose bricks just for that ('cause he keeps mixing pieces from all the different kits which is a nightmare).

While wandering around, we stumbled onto Lego Mindstorm presentation. M is a bit too young for Mindstorms, but since those are robots, he's been asking for one for a long time. Seeing all the assembled and programmed Mindstorms was very motivational for him too 'cause once we got home he was eager to try learning some programming (with MIT's Scratch - free and easy to use). He actually got so into it that he kept asking me to "please, do some more programming with him". Needless to say, I'm very happy about it, especially since I tried Scratch with him a year ago without much enthusiasm on his part.

Back to the BrickMagic... Before we left, M also built a bit with bricks. But he was pretty tired and distracted and was clearly ready to go home. And so we did. The end.