Surprises!

I love a good surprise.  Well, let me rephrase that.  I love planning a good surprise for someone else.  I think it is fun to see someone else's reaction when something happens that they are totally not expecting. 

This past weekend was full of surprises.  Kevin had to go to work in Chapel Hill on Wednesday and was going to be there through Friday.  The boys know he has to be out of town periodically for his job, but they just don't like it when he's away.  I asked Fletcher if he thought it would be fun to drive to Chapel Hill on Friday and surprise Daddy.  Fletcher loved the idea.  He said we could wait until 10 pm and sneak into his hotel and knock on the door and yell, "Surprise!"  I tried to steer him in a bit of a different direction while trying to maintain his enthusiasm (I am sure the other hotel guests were glad we didn't go with his initial plan).  We opted to surprise him at work. 

Now in order to pull this off, I had to get Kevin involved.  Otherwise, he would be driving home as we were driving to Chapel Hill.  Fletcher didn't want to tell Luke because he was afraid Luke would spill the beans if we talked to Kevin on the phone.  He finally told Luke and Luke thought it sounded really fun. 

Kevin was in a meeting and played along perfectly when Luke yelled, "Surprise!"  Fletcher was so excited and flustered that he couldn't do anything but giggle.  We left work and headed to Kevin's hotel.  I asked if Kevin knew how to get to the Raleigh Convention Center....for another surprise.  I told the boys that there was a conference going on there.  Fletcher wanted to know what a conference was. I told him about the math conferences I used to go to when I was a teacher.  He was not impressed.  And a little less than thrilled at the thought of going to a "boring conference." 

He saw the Lego logo when we drove up and his attitude changed.  He had no idea what awaited him inside the Convention Center.  Lego Kids Fest goes to five cities each year.  There's so much to do and so much to see.  We had a blast! 

All of these structures were built out of legos.  Notice Fletcher's Lego Star Wars shirt.  I suggested he put that on in the morning because I knew what was coming later that night.

 C3PO and R2D2

Captain Jack Sparrow

 Lightning McQueen from Cars.  It must have taken forever to build this one.

 Darth Vader

 Boba Fett (?)

Storm Trooper or Captain Rex or some other Star Wars character.  You would think I would be better at naming these. 

 Droid?  Clone fighter?  Star Wars thingy.

 Indiana Jones

Buzz and Woody (and proof that I was actually there with them since I am usually the one taking all the pictures)

 Mystery Mural.  Each person gets a small tile with colors on the front and a number on the back. Here in this picture they are making their tiles based on the colors they need. 

Then they get to put it on the big mural wall according to its number.  By the end of the weekend, the huge mural will be complete and we will get to go to a website and see what the surprise mural is.  My guess is that it will be the city skyline of Raleigh. 

 Luke felt like such a big kid putting his into place.

 Just a giant pile of legos to sit in, sift through, build, etc. 

 We buried Fletcher and Luke. 

 This was the Duplo area.  Duplo blocks are the lego brick that are for smaller children. 

They built a tower taller than Kevin.  Kevin got reprimanded by the Lego Staff guy.  He told him we had to take it down after our picture.  Since this area is for smaller children, they didn't want anything to fall on them.  We had to laugh because Kevin deals with building codes and Homeowners Associations all the time for work.  Who knew Lego had a building committee. 

 This was an outline of the United States.  Each person could build a scene with anything they wanted on it and then tell the worker what part of the country to put it in.  We'll get to go to the www.legokidsfest.com website this week and see the completed US. 

 Here's what Fletcher built.  He chose to put it by a tall tower near Georgia so we could (hopefully) find it in the completed picture online.

 Build A Story.  This might have been Fletcher's favorite area because he especially likes creating different characters.  There was a little town built with football field, soccer field, movie theater, sidewalks, lighthouse, etc.  Kids could come and make their own minifigures to be part of the story.  There seemed to be lots of skeletons and zombies in this town.

 Luke liked the lighthouse.

 These were bins of heads and hats and accessories. 

I took this video as we were leaving.  Notice all the bins and crates and boxes behind the curtains.  I can only imagine how many legos they have to bring to each city to pull off this event. 

As we were leaving, Fletcher said, "This was so awesome!!! This was a great memory!!!" 

But there were more surprises to come.....stay tuned for the next surprise (besides getting to sleep at Daddy's hotel which they also thought was very cool and fun).