Counting down to ..... Lego trains!

After many, many visits to Lego stores in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Florida and a couple of trips to Legoland Florida and at least two Legoland Discovery Centers we finally took the hint. At a free Lego event held at the Yankee Candle home store in South Deerfield in August we met a guy named Andy. Andy was an adult who liked Legos. He told us about NELUG. NELUG is the New England Lego Users Group. Someone in our family needed to join this group.

My husband has lots of hobbies and interests. Among them he is a member of a LARP (Live Action Role Playing) group, a member of a dice-and-paper-game group that meets weekly, and a member of at least one amateur ham radio club. He has other memberships as well. Suffice it to say his social life is busy!

My hobbies and interests have mostly fallen along the lines of reading and writing. We met at a LARP event and I've done dice-and-paper games in the past, but I consider myself to be mostly retired from those activities due to parenthood and old age. At my husband's urging, it fell to me to  join the Lego group.

 Without a membership I couldn't see much of NELUG's website so I put off joining. After talking to store managers and watching the Lego sets pile up I finally decided to join the group just before Christmas. I paid my dues for 2016 before the new year started.

I started researching Lego events, websites, Flickr, seeing what cool MOCs are out there, and more. I also continued to build with Legos of course.

It's been about 5 weeks now, maybe 6. I've started to add a few people from the group to my Facebook friends list. I've been active in the NELUG forums online. Next week, one week from today, if everything goes as planned I'll actually meet some of the members in person, besides Andy of course.

The Amherst Railway Society is responsible for putting on this HUGE show at the Big E. NELUG has a booth. Yay NELUG! Luckily for me it's near the clinic area so I should be able to find it because the floor plan for this event covers four buildings!

Here's the website to the show--

http://www.railroadhobbyshow.com/index.php

Here's the website for NELUG-

http://www.nelug.org/

So now I'm counting down for the setup to start, and I'm watching the weather too. I'll have my daughter in tow with me on Thursday. I hope she cooperates on this new adventure. I think it will be fun for us all.

Lego Batmobile

One quick shot of the Batmobile that my husband made. He is lending it to me for a NELUG event that I am going to in a couple of weeks so I pulled out the camera quickly before I put it in the bin to bring to the show.

And that's it for today folks! I think I am all caught up from the weekend now.

I did want to get some more Lego Friends photos for you, but I didn't get a chance. I'll work on that during the week or the weekend if I can.

Lego Friends Olivia's Exploration Car (minus Zobo, the robot)

This set surprised me. It had something for the whole family. We bought 2 sets, and could have bought 3. My husband wanted (and got) the robot. I wanted the car to add to my vehicle collection and my daughter... well she wanted everything of course! The magnifying glass really works and the telescope swivels around and moves (although you can't see through it).

Lego Creator Lakeside Lodge

I built it the way they show it on the front of the box. I loved the moose!

Lego Elves, Naida's Secret Spa set

I finally got a Lego Elves set. I'm not big into the storyline, but I think the minifigs are cool.

Free Lego Parrot

 The Lego calendar has a coupon redeemable for a free Lego parrot. This is what it looks like. It is a small set of course, maybe 43 pieces or something like that.

Lego Friends / Barbie Mega Bloks Mashup

   It looked like a horror scene at first glance, but at further inspection I figured out that it was a clothing shop. This was the scene that my daughter laid out while playing yesterday.

I'd like to think of this character as the villian, holding 2 pairs of scissors.

Here come the shoppers....

R.I.P. Glenn Frey

Another great one lost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4ueaD22hg8

Rest in Peace David Bowie

Yesterday the world learned of David Bowie's passing, from cancer. I'm still processing.

I think one of the reasons Bowie's death hits me so hard is because I grew up with him. If you are around 45 years old now then you grew up with 80s music. MTV debuted in 1982 (I was 11) and it played music videos. Bowie and others were there at the beginning. I went through my teen years listening to this stuff, much like our parents grooved the music of the 60s. Also, Bowie is from my parents' generation. When Johnny Cash died it was sad, but he was our grandparents' generation. It was expected. It's harder when the musicians are my parents' age.

This is incomplete and I hope to come back and edit it later, but I need to get it down.

Lego City Van and Caravan

Rainy Sunday afternoons are great for Lego projects. Here's another one I did yesterday. The Lego City Van and Caravan which was just released on January 1st.

Lego Creator Ocean Explorer

After the frustration of the not-Lego set I had to get back to something manageable. At 213 pieces this was a nice easy build for a rainy afternoon.

Imitation Lego- Kazi Building Block City Bus Motorbus Gas Station #85014

Is Lego really that awesome? What about the OTHER building toys that are out there? I decided to try and find out. I asked my husband to get me the Kazi bus for Christmas and he did.

Upon opening the package we noticed that the seller had not included the box. Also, none of the minifigures were included. Bummer. I found the stickers hidden in the instruction manual so that was good. The bags were all sealed so we thought we had all the pieces but when we were done we had a bag of leftover pieces and no people figures so I'm not sure what happened.

I didn't take pictures of the instructions but I noticed right away that they were different than Lego. They didn't tell up front what pieces were going to be used on each step for one thing. For another thing the perspective was different. I stumbled through trying really hard to figure it out. The building bricks themselves resembled Legos, but they were harder to put together. They had a different feel to them. Legos are definitely superior. Finally I gave up. I couldn't figure out where the bus seats were supposed to go, and I was just digging in deeper and deeper into frustration. In short, I wasn't having FUN.

I handed it over to my husband. He got the job done and then I took some pictures.

The instruction book

 Bus stop

 Gas station

 Bus

 I guess this one came out blurry. Bummer.

The back of the bus

 Opened the roof and looked inside...

 Another blurry picture with the bus door open...

So enough of that! I'd still like to experiment with a Playmobil set sometime too. I think the results of that might be better. Definitely proved that Lego is a superior product though.