Saturday 2 November 2013

Lego Makes Memories...

After reviewing the new Lego Batman: DC Superheroes Unite movie our appetite is well and truly whetted for next year's full length The Lego Movie.

Due to be released on 14th February 2014, The Lego Movie tells the story of a minifigure called Emmet, who is mistakenly picked up by a group of strangers who think he is the most extraordinary person in the world and key to helping them in their quest to stop an evil tyrant and save the world.

The movie has a fantastic cast including Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks and two of my absolute favourite voice artists - Morgan Freeman and Liam Neeson.

I don't think it'll surprise anyone when I say that Lego is incredibly popular in our house. I knew about my partner's love of Lego early on because we'd both bought Lego Clickits Advent Calendars for our girls in a big Manchester branch of Woolworths the first year we were courting. It wasn't until we moved in together that we discovered just how big a collection we both had.

Clickits Lego Advent Calendar

In the intervening 7 years we've seen our children progress from Clickets and Lego City through Spongebob, Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars. We've had the 2 little boys and they moved swiftly past Duplo because they had the bigger children to influence them. This year Santa has requests from our family ranging from The Battle Of Hoth game and Monster Fighters Crazy Scientist to 'more wheels' and a Lego City Garbage Truck.

We don't believe Lego is just for children here, not in any way. Lego is for everyone. For the last 3 years my birthday present in November has been that year's Lego Creator Winter building, so now we have a really impressive display that it's become tradition I spend days putting together - and I love every minute of it. It's our first Christmas decoration to go up each year.

Lego Winter display

My favourite Lego memories though are those that we made together as a whole family in the Summer of 2011. We took all 7 of our children, and my partner's parents, and travelled up through Belgium, France and The Netherlands and went to visit the original Legoland in Billund, Denmark. It was a real holiday of a lifetime and took a lot of planning and arranging. We didn't have a lot of money and we camped en route and managed to do the whole trip on just over £3,000 including staying in the Legoland Village Family Hostel for 3 nights. Not bad for 11 people.

We were all smiling even before we got there....
3am and some of us were trying to sleep before the 6am ferry
Lego Family Hostel Billund Denmark
The Family Hostel was absolutely lovely
Waking your nearly 3 year old up in the morning and asking him "where are we?"
and the answer is "Legoland" really is priceless...
Legoland really was magic...
Legoland Play Area Legoland Denmark

Lego Denmark Sea Life
Legoland was our first real experience of a Sealife Centre...
We walked into town past the Lego Headquarters - can you imagine what goes on in there?! There was a great display in the window of Lego through the years, and a very special memory for me - Lego people that I used to play with when I was little....

Lego people 1970's

We will definitely be back one day....

And if that's not enough Lego for you - here's a (very widescreen, my apologies for that) trailer for The Lego Movie...

12 comments:

  1. What great memories. It's great how a so called 'toy' can create so many memories. My husband loves sitting and doing lego with E and it's lovely to watch. I hope it carries on for a long time and eventually F will be able to join in with the boys too.

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    1. I'm sure it will, it'll be Olivia's Treehouse for you before you know it :D

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  2. I love my Lego too! and I think this movie will be a hit in our family :-)

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    1. I think mine are going to love it. They've had about 2 hours worth of entertainment from the trailer!

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  3. i didnt know you had been to the original legoland! how cool! we would love to go. my best childhood lego memory is of the lego castle set, we played with it so much! we had loads of it, maybe bits from different castle sets, cos it was all passed down from my older brothers, we used to keep it in a wooden draw under the bed n had hours of fun playing with it with cousins n siblings. for my kids, they are still only starting to learn with lego really but when they make something with it i feel really proud :D

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    1. Hehehe.....it's great isn't it? I love it when mine bring me a vehicle or robot or something that's almost recognisable. We were looking at the old Lego castle sets yesterday, they were brilliant - when I was a child we had a helicopter and a policeman, aside from my little family of people that's what I mainly remember :)

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  4. Brilliant memories. I love lego too, but not nearly as much as you do. I would happily get 6yo's sets out and build for ages though if I had the chance.

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  5. Wow, that Legoland looks amazing! Z and his Dad love LEGO. They can sit for ages doing a box of something together.

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    1. It's brilliant for bringing everyone together - we all play with it and it's great to see all the teenagers helping the little ones make cars and things :)

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  6. looking forward to watch the movie!

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  7. Lovely photos Jenny. Monkey loves Legoland and I love Lego too

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