We're just back from a fabulous weekend in NYC visiting Grandma. We took advantage of the gorgeous weather and went to the Top of the Rock, which has the best views of New York City that I've ever seen. And since we were already at Rockefeller Center, we had to stop in at the new Lego store there.

Rockefeller Center in Legos

The boys scored some awesome NYC legos.

Before our big weekend in the Big Apple, we putted around Boston.

The boys had been wanting to visit this Boston themed mini-golf course for weeks, so despite the over 90 degree heat wave, we trudged out to the utterly shade-less Village Green to hit some balls and lose about 10% of our body weight.

Meanwhile, the boys have been preparing for our annual trip to Germany by going to German camp. After a month of following the German team during the World Cup and now two weeks of German language class, they're psyched to go.

Wee is preparing for Germany by learning how to wipe herself after going potty. Apparently, hubby is planning to take a vacation from that while we're there.

Just two weeks and we're off. So stay tuned: vacation 2010 is coming! This year with added attractions!

Another year and the lego love is still going strong here at Hansel house!

Christmas afternoon found us ladies (me, wee and grandma) deserted by the boy/menfolk while they were busy building their new legos.

Santa brought the boys the Star Wars lego sets they had on their wish lists.

And hubby got the Lego Mindstorms robotics set.

"What's that, honey?" "Oh, just a generic robotic arm." That is totally what he said. Tomorrow it'll be something completely different and equally impressive. In fact, within the first few hours of opening the box, he'd built a lego version of the hexbugs the boys got for Christmas!

And it won't be long before the boys are building robots too. Recently, they've been working on lego marble runs. Oh yes, the apple doesn't fall far from the lego tree! Here's a video of B explaining his coolest creation so far, a lego elevator he built entirely by himself:

(some highlights: 16 sec. in, wee laughs at B's explanation; at about 1:20 he's stoped explaining and it's off and running!)

For me, all this continued lego-mania means that my husband is most likely to be found silently building or programming in the dining room and I'm most likely to be found on my way to the Container Store to buy more storage boxes. I am the queen of lego storage now though. Here's how the lego bookcase looks these days:

Each set is in a Container Store shoe box with a label either cut from the original box or printed out from the internet (if we threw the box away too soon). Lost & found bits are in a box of their own. And the big improvement in 2009: all instruction books are now kept in plastic sheet protectors and sorted (by theme then number) in 3-ring binders!

Oh I'm getting the hang of this now.

Finally, legoland. The boys were so excited, I could barely get them to stand still for this picture. And then, the poor things, we made them walk through Miniland before going on any rides. But Miniland turned out to be pretty cool after all. I guess mommy and daddy aren't quite as mean as they look.

(click for the big version)

This is a 1:20 scale version of the Piazza San Marco in Venice made out of legos. Seriously, that's all Legos there. And the thing is as tall as you. And there was more. There were canals with boats that move through the water. The people in the piazza even danced! It was amazing, amazing, amazing.

(click for the BIG version)

And here's the German Reichstag. Did I mention this is all made of legos? I feel like I need to remind you because it's so freaking unbelievable. That's the Love Parade in front of the Reichstag. And in the background you can see one of the cranes from the construction at Potsdamer Platz. (Still, all legos.) There were a ton of buildings from Berlin, including the Brandenburger Tor, the Siegessäule (where Obama recently gave a speech), the Dom, and even the silly red Info Box. All the details were perfect too: there were moving Trambahns and tour buses and all sorts of little minifigures going about their Berliner business.

There were so many other cities that had been recreated, it was a whole miniEurope: an entire Hamburg port with giant ships and cranes and ferris wheels; Amsterdam with like 20,000 little lego tulips, Neuschwanstein castle (something for the Amis to look at - heh, heh); and a humongous version of the Munich Airport with the huge Airbus planes driving into hangars outside and little people movers inside. The coolest of all though was the model of Munich's new Allianz Arena, where the Bayern München soccer team plays.

(click for BIG picture)

This is supposedly the largest lego building ever built, with over 1,000,000 lego pieces. Did you forget that these things are all built of legos? I know! Me too! That's legos there. Legos. This model has 30,000 lego minifigures watching the soccer game. And some of them have little cameras that flash. It was so freaking cool even the boys spent some time captivated by it. Before they remembered about the rides.

Yes, the rides. Let's go on some rides. But wait, before we go, does anyone have to use the little boys' or little girls' room?

Oh, and pregnant lego people are not allowed on this ride.

Are we all good now?

A lego technic spinny, make-you-sick ride that the boys had to go on all by themselves. "Uh, those rides aren't fun anymore once you're over 20," we told them.

The lego pirates ride, where you ride in a lego-looking boat and shoot water at the people on the shore from water cannons. The spectators have cannons too though, so everyone gets wet. Even though we didn't have any swim clothes with us, we let the boys take off their shirts and play pirate. You can see B in front behind the fence and S's head is just visible behind a water cannon over the cement wall on the other side. Man, they had fun.

This will go down in family history as the trip where the boys became roller-coaster fans. Here they are together on their favorite coaster, the Feuerdrache. This was a park photo - you know the ones they make while you're on the ride that you can buy afterwards. What parents could resist that picture?

Later, when it started to rain near the end of the day, we went inside and built legos. At what other amusement park can you do that?!! The sprinkles turned into a real downpour and it was getting close to closing time, so we pulled on our funny Legoland rain ponchos and made our way back to the car.

Good bye, Legoland. Until next time. Oh yes, we have been told by the boys that there WILL be a next time.

"that way! that way!"

We promised the boys we'd go to Legoland Germany this year and last week it was finally time. Legoland is a good four hour drive away from the in-laws, so we decided to pack up the car Thursday afternoon, drive down to Günzburg and spend the night at the brand new Legoland Village before going to the park on Friday. Legoland Village is a village full of lego-themed cottages a short walk away from the park

Vorfreude ist die beste Freude

The boys were so excited. We got a Lego Racers house. It was teeny tiny, but super cute. These Germans sure are clever. There was just enough room for six beds (including two for the boys in an itty bitty loft up the stairs) and a bathroom. And there were lego decorations inside too.

don't you want one of these over your bed at home?
you could make your own with about 500 white lego pieces

The village was so cool! Each little group of houses had its own lego theme and its own themed playground.

snakes, why did it have to be snakes?

The Indiana Jones playground had a "crashed" wooden plane playground and a lego snake at the entrance. The Knights' Kingdom houses had a wooden castle playground and the Pirates had a giant wooden boat play structure. The boys played on all of them. They had so much fun in the village, they didn't complain once about having to wait until the next day to go to the actual Legoland. Seriously, if you're coming from a ways away to visit Legoland Deutschland, I really recommend the Legoland Feriendorf. It was awesome!

The next morning we walked over the little village boardwalk (yes, there's even a little beach/wading pond) to the village restaurant for our breakfast buffet. The boys studied the Legoland map while eating Unmengen von choco-cereal.

And then we went to the park... (and I'll tell you all about that tomorrow!)

Wee one in her Brooklyn General onesie asking me, 'when are you going to make me that denim pinafore, mommy?'

And here she is asleep in her swing cuddling with big brother B's little blankie. Lesson for big brother: if you don't put it away, the baby's going to think it's hers.

Big brother B comes to me and says, 'mom, I'm making a lego contraption and need some yarn'. I think we can manage that....

His little Lego man needed a parachute, so we grabbed some yellow Opal sock yarn to attach him to the tissue parachute. Then Lego man got popped into the contraption, that got hung on some more yarn (dk cotton this time) draped across the room and when the contraption hits a certain point on the line, out he falls through the trap door.

Oh yes, we're all about the yarn here.

can you find the daisy hat in the middle of all those legos?

I spent the entire afternoon with the boys working on our "structions". They picked out their biggest lego sets to work on and I had my itty bitty hats book.

how to make a car suspension

how to make a wheel assembly for a helicopter

how to make petals for a daisy hat

While the boys built a car and a giant helicopter, I mananged to make all the petals and sew them to the top of the upside-down daisy hat. The boys were actually watching my progress, asking how I was putting the petals on. They were really interested! And they thought it was so cool that I was following 'structions just like they were.

And here's bear/dog with the finished hat!

It came out super cute (despite the fact that my gauge must be a little different from the desired gauge in the book and I could only fit five petals on the top instead of six), but I think it still looks just like a daisy! This may be my favorite of all the hats I've made so far. Of course, I can't really see all the hats I've knit, since baby's stuff is all piled up in a heap in our bedroom. Next week we'll finally be setting up baby's room. And then I promise a pic of all the hats and all the booties all together!

I spent the night before Christmas Eve braiding ties (wow, that took a long time!) so Santa could put the nosewarmers under the tree for Christmas morning.

click here for the video! (Windows Media file should work on Internet Explorer
or try this link for Real Media version or this link for Quick Time version)

And I even got a little something knitty for Christmas! Hubby (with the help of knitbuddy, Dani) got me the Itty-Bitty Hats book (something I've picked up and considered buying for myself a dozen times) along with yarn to make the little striped cherry-o hat. So I did.

I started it while playing board games with the boys (which I can do virtually hands free, 'cause when we're playing Mousetrap the boys always want to do all the building, plus they like to move the all pieces themselves, and S built a lego die roller with his Christmas legos that spits the die out of it's mouth to roll it!). And then I relaxed in the evening (with a very excited wee one in my belly) by finishing off hat and cherries.

Hope your holiday was merry!

I just got back from taking the boys off to kindergarten for their first day of school.

They were so excited! And looking at those little faces, I couldn't help but be excited with them. The legos however are feeling very lonely. In fact, although the boys were never worried about missing mommy (or each other - they're in different classes), S did express some concern about going to school "every day!" and not having enough time to do his building. Awwww.

Let's see, first, wake up, build stuff.

Wendi wanted to know how we store all the boys' legos. Currently, they take up 3/5ths of a big IKEA bookcase and are stored either in their original boxes or in plastic boxes from the Container Store.

And one of the tea cups from the knitted tea set I made a couple of years ago serves as the repository for found pieces.

The boys' other current obsession, something we get to "enjoy" the whole day long, is these McDonalds toys that they got in Germany. They're like little pretend iPods that play a very annoying pop song (if you have never heard the "Dubi Dam Dam" song, thank your lucky stars right now, because I will never ever get it out of my head). They each have three of these music things with different songs and they like to turn them all on at the same time. Aaaahhhh! S has one with a German rap song and he turns it on and makes a pouty hip face.

S as Lloyd Dobbler in Say Anything

And finally, something to do on a rainy day (or a day like today where mommy has to clean and do laundry all day), new boardgames from the treasure chest!

They got this chest filled with boardgames for their birthday and since getting the Dead Man's Chest pirate toy in their last American Happy Meal, they are fascinated by treasure chests. They are convinced that by virtue of being in a treasure chest, these games have got to be cool. So much so that they've already learned how to play Parcheesi and want to learn Backgammon next.

Why yes, we did bring back some legos and some yarn. Just enough for a little second birthday celebration for me and the boys!

slammer bike for B

technic truck for S

Lana Grossa Teamcolors sock yarn for me

And that's it.* Man, I was so good.

(* Okay, there were some other legos from Oma and Opa, but they're small and I didn't buy them. And then there's the bags of sock yarn I got at the factory store, but I'm not keeping those, so they don't count either, right?)

What could be in there?

Legos, of course!

Must. Build. Now.

Aunt and Uncle help out with the (over 1400!) pieces.

Most giantest helicopter ever, done.

Super truck getting the final touches (chassis, frame, interior with hand brake, gear shift, pedals, side mirrors, glove compartment)... and done!

Wheeeeee!

Proof that it's been much too wet around here lately.

The boys wear their swim goggles every time we go out. And they're building Lego boats.

Another trip to the Lego store. The boys saved up their points, picked out what they wanted, and carried the boxes out of the store with much excitement and oh boying. And then, as instinctual as speech itself, B looks at his brother's box and says "mine's bigger than yours." Nevermind that S's legos are more complicated or have more pieces than B's. Nope, apparently size, and only size, is what matters.

Man, they start young!

they're heeeeeere: Spongebob legos!

The boys are adding to their lego stash at an alarming rate (all a part of my plan to make my yarn stash look less conspicuously large - hee hee). We knitters should recognize all these classic signs... Such as stopping by the store because we just happen to be "in the area" (well, the Natick Lego store IS in the Boston area).

19 points for the big crane set

Trolling eBay for bargains.

yes, they are really looking at Legos on eBay

And finding that one amazing thing you simply can't leave the store without. Like the Spongebob legos. There was no talk of points or saving up for them, we had to get them.

look at the teeny tiny Plankton piece trying to steal a Krabby Patty!

And build them. Immediately.

that's one happy kid

That reminds me, there's something I need to get at the yarn store....

To stem the tide of Legos streaming into the house and reduce whining on our trips to the Lego store, we set up a point system for the boys to earn points toward Lego sets. Good behavior, playing calmly, sharing, eating new things and wiping your own butt earn you points. Each point is worth a dollar at the store (this made it easy for the boys to look up prices and see how much they could buy). B got it into his head that he wanted a huge submarine set that cost $39. He's been earning points for about month and a half now, saving them up even while his brother cashed in all of his points for a smaller, but extremely cool racer along the way. Finally, yesterday, he made it to 39!

39, count 'em, 39 points!

He was so proud. I went to the gym in the morning before we went to the store and he told me to do my exercises quickly and instructed me to tell everyone at the exercise place that he was getting the big submarine set.

over 600 pieces of fun

He was building for hours! Which conveniently allowed me to talk hubby into watching the kids for the afternoon while I went to Porter Square Books to see the Yarn Harlot (tee hee) and knit with scores of other Harlot fans under a disco ball.

I did not expect a disco ball in a Masonic Temple
clearly these places are not what I thought

Let me take this opportunity to apologize to Stephanie for all the sockapaloooza sock pictures she's had to pose for. Including this one that I took yesterday. Heh, heh.

Friday

Sunday

Tuesday

the Tooth Fairy brought Legos!

Could Paul Klee have started with Legos?

Zoob is fun!

I am king of Zoob and lord of all the Zoob creatures.

Zoob Bug

I think this one started off as Zoob DNA, but after all the cursing that was involved in daddy's constructing the Zoob Rex (which was so unstable that the boys weren't allowed to touch it after he'd put it together), the boys decided they'd have just as much fun with a Zoob centipede.

And there's some fun waiting for mommy too, thanks to Kristin, who apparently lives where folks need a lot of powdered beverage mix. She heard me complaining that my local stores only have like two flavors of Kool-Aid and sent me a "few" packets and some KnitPicks dye-your-own yarn to play with. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!

look, she even included rubber gloves!

This is going to be a fun week.

oh, just a little sock yarn

Yes, I did buy some yarn. It's true. But each of the little bags contains some yarn for my best knitbuddies, so if you take those away, it's really not that much that I bought. Certainly not so much when you take into consideration how many Legos I brought back.

and these are just the big sets

I had to borrow an extra suitcase from the in-laws to bring back all the Lego booty. We've got some new Legos to play with now, two Lego sets for the boys' birthday in the summer, and two sets for Christmas. Hey, when you see what you like, you gotta get it while you can, right?

Can I talk to you about Lego for a minute? You see, they've changed their whole program and everything is themed now, like Harry Potter scenes and Star Wars ships and a disturbing number of variations of robots with giant guns. The problem with all of these is that you're just supposed to make the one thing with each boxed set. They used to make sets with more general pieces and instruction books describing several different things you can make with them. But it's all marketing tie-ins and individual units now, presumably to maximize the number of boxes that you have to buy to complete the set or play out the story or whatever. But my boys just want to build. And build. And build. They'll build something from the instruction book and then immediately take it apart to build the next thing. We've bought all the so-called "designer" sets that are still available (except the ones with guns) and I've been keeping my eye open for older sets still on the shelves somewhere. Old stock never stays on the shelves long in America, but I hit the jackpot in Germany. All of the sets I bought back have production dates of 2003 on the boxes and have instructions for 10 or so different vehicles or creations. And two of them are even old Inventor sets with working motors (hubby is sooo excited about those!). So I had to get them, you see?

Oh, a tip from one Lego mom to all you other Lego moms (and aunts and grandmas) out there, I hope you've gotten yourself a couple of these. They really work and help save those fingernails from Lego-induced chips! And with two of them, you can lever even really tiny pieces apart.

Well that about ends this installment of 'everything you ever wanted to know about Legos and more'. Tomorrow, I'll tackle putting away all that sock yarn.

"meet" me now - get it?
those Germans are so funny!

What a fun shopping day I had yesterday! Kerrie flew down from London to meet up for a three-hour shopping tour in Frankfurt! What a gal, just flying over like that to see me. All I can say is, she is fabulous! Of course, I didn't manage to take a picture of her, but I did take a picture of some of the incredible hand-dyed yarn she brought me from her online (and soon to be brick & mortar) yarn store, HipKnits.

ooooh, silk and cashmere, yuuuuum

The yarn was so yummy I had it spread all over the table where we sat down to eat. The Kellner was little verblüfft when he brought our drinks over and saw the yarn in the middle of the table. Yes, we're crazy english-speakers who travel hours to scope out a few yarn stores in a foreign city, but still choose to eat lunch at Pizza Hut. We spent so long chatting and eating (pizza, not yarn) that we didn't end up having that much time for the shopping. But I have a feeling that each of us probably has enough yarn already anyway.

Wolle Rödel in Tönesgasse

Still we did our best to find a couple of the shops that Beate told me about. The first yarn shop we visited was Wolle Rödel. They make their own yarns and they are all really lovely. They have variegated and self-patterning sock yarns, soft merinos, delightful cottons and interesting blends. If I lived in Frankfurt (or Munich - they have another shop there that I've visited several times), I would definitely be using a lot of their yarns to make sweaters. They've done a really good job reproducing the styles, gauges, and content of brand name yarns like Lana Grossa and Regia. And their colors are to die for.

Wolle Rödel is for yarnheads!

The second store we found was a beautiful little gem of a yarn store, called Lana.

Lana in Fressgasse

It was so tiny, but we could see from outside that it had all sorts of exquisite yarns like Noro. Unfortunately, Kerrie and I only got to see the store from the outside, because the owner had to close for her lunch hour. And then Kerrie had to ride back to the airport. I couldn't find the third shop that was supposed to be near the main shopping area, so I went shopping for other things (Legos, I bought tons and tons of Legos!) and then rode home and knitted in the train (Regia Canadian Color #4732).

kipping in the Deutsche Bahn

When I got back to my in-laws I found that the boys had spent the whole day building. They'd put together an entire Lego space station with little space vehicles and a rocket ship.

And hiding houses with dining chairs and blankets.

S. is also smiling for the picture in the house

So a good day was had by all. Maybe I should go away more often!

who can resist a silly hat?

Fasching (carneval) fashion.

England vs. Brazil

WM (World Cup) practice with Lego soccer and official t-shirts.

Erica has another weasley sweater to show us! This one is for her other little girl and was knit by her mother-in-law. What a great pair those girls make in their weasleys!
Kitty Kitty finished her husband's Azkaban scarf - in Aurora 8, yum!

Kylie joined the knitalong and is planning a weasley and a Gryffindor scarf
And Erin has already started a weasley. She admits that making her own HP scarf was the reason she began knitting in the first place. A girl after my own heart!

Since we're admitting things today, look what I bought on eBay:

The boys have so many Legos, I figure I'm allowed to have one too.

Today it's my son S's turn to post a few pictures. I gave him the camera and asked him to snap some pics of a few of his favorite things:

Hey, it's the knitted tea set I made two years ago!

Our new IKEA chairs in S's favorite color.

A close-up of the Children of Catan game, with the most important part: "4 years"

Blankies.

Legos.

What more could a boy want?

smile for the... oh, forget it

Before going downstairs to open the presents, the boys and I pulled on our weasley sweaters. I'm thinking of keeping it as a new tradition for Christmas - wearing weasley sweaters, or handknit sweaters to open gifts.

and eat giant Christmas lollipops

And under the tree were a few fabby knitterly things.

A blue sheep mug for my blue blog from Rebecca.

carribean sky under the tree

Beautiful blue hand-painted yarn from Dani. I'd been coveting this yarn in her online store and she saved some for me!

Super-funky book, Knitorama, from Lisa (I love this book so much I've already kinda made something from it! More later this week, when I get some buttons to finish it off.)

And the boys were very excited to be able to tell me that there was "yarn for mommy" in their new, big Lego crane set.

see it?

Well, I guess that's what you get when you put yarn on the boys' wish list.

Apologies all around!

First to all those sock pals still waiting for socks or to be assigned to sock saviors, I've been focused on holiday knitting and a pattern I'm working on and haven't managed to work through the last set of updates and reports from sockapaltwoza participants. My bad! I have heard from several sock saviors that make-up socks have been finished and several forgotten sock pals that they've finally received socks. Let me say here how grateful I am to the sock saviors for their extra time and generosity and genuinely delighted I am when I hear from someone who patiently waited and was at last rewarded with a great pair of socks. So sorry for having fallen behind. I'm hoping to squeeze in the last bit of admin before the Christmas rush begins.

Second, apologies to my two sockapalooza tech guys who have already started to hear things like 'wouldn't it be cool next time, if the sockapalooza folks could do this or this when they sign up...' when they haven't even received their tech guy thank you socks yet! Don't worry, socks are in the works. Then the work can begin. (Wink. wink.)

Third, an apologetic warning to my future sockapaloooza (yes, that's three o's!) sock pal. I'll be wanting knee-highs! I am all about knee-highs now. Here's my new favorite pair. I lerf them.

And finally, sorry Santa, you're gonna have to make this Christmas a big one, 'cause Nikolaus came this morning and he was very good to the boys this year. He's going to be a hard act to follow.

"I'm so excited!"

"a lego Christmas tree - let's build it!"

Chrismas is coming. On a jet plane.

Halloween knitting has reached fever pitch here. Every spare moment has been devoted to knitting "Things". After neglecting my email and the laundry for over 24 hours, I have four finished sleeves.

Next up, those pesky fronts...

Speaking of things, the real "Things" had a little Christmas-in-October this morning. We were at the toy store yesterday and I spotted something on sale that Santa really wanted to get for them. They were so busy throwing tantrums and crashing from a night with too little sleep to notice, so I decided to try to buy everything real quick. Well, there was a big mess-up at the checkout counter, I had to go to the service desk, and while there was checking and rechecking, eventually one of the boys says, "heeeeeyyyyyy, can I have that?" Once they had them in their hands, they wouldn't release them. They held the boxes clutched to their chests the whole ride home. Daddy and I "talked to Santa" and all agreed that the boys could have the toys this morning. And they've been putting together Lego pieces since 7:30!