Airplane(s)!

Today was build your own Lego aircraft day at the aviation museum down in College Park. It's a great little museum --- right next to a working airport, ridiculously reasonable, and almost entirely hands-on.

It was also packed today because of the aforementioned Lego festival. And by festival I mean half a dozen bins of lego pieces, a few sets of instructions, and more socially awkward middle schoolers than a spelling bee between the Mathletes and the student council.

We've been there two or three times before, but only in summer and usually during the week. Which means that in the past we've had the place to ourselves. Today the place was besieged by brick-building hordes and air/space enthusiasts. And one Abraham Lincoln impersonator. In street clothes. I recongized him as he'd spoken at a staff retreat I attended a few years ago in Gettysburg. [It's a long story, but even if I'd never seen him before I would have guessed his hobby. He really looks like Lincoln, even in a sweatshirt and jeans. I digress.]

Despite the crowds, the kids had fun checking out the different exhibits, and of course, Samson is all for anything that lets him dress up in clothes worn by thousands of other kids before him.

As for the building activities...that went as well as could be expected. Actually, I can't honestly report on how Samson's endeavors went. I took the easy way out and went with Jane over to the little kid area. She and I had a great time building towers on wheels and making patterns with the different colored bricks. [Sidebar: Duplo blocks are totally my speed when it comes to Lego and building. Even when I was a kid, I had little interest in spending hours following directions and diagrams. And no amount of marketing was going to convince me that such activities were "play." Vicki, on the other hand, has read all the owner's manuals we have ever received and was right there with Sam to help him build his miniature Apache gunship (and to keep the bigger kids from taking the pieces he needed to complete it).]

And although the kit was missing a piece, and the pilot wouldn't sit right, he rallied (eventually) and was able to spend some quality time virtually crashing planes for the old Aeropostale.

Really, what more could you ask of a Saturday afternoon in January?