What Have I Gotten Myself Into

As some of you may know, I spent most of my childhood playing with Legos. I acquired quite a collection over the years as well. I enjoyed them so much that I kept them all with the intention of someday giving them to my kids. Fast forward to now. I finally have a kid, so the wheels have been put in motion for endless hours of imagination expanding playtime for him. I didn't get my first Lego set until I was 5 I think, so it will still be quite a while until I give them to Nate. I have thought of one potential problem though. It would be quite overwhelming to dump 10,000 plus pieces on a 5 year old kid, throw him some instructions, and say "Have at it!" I imagine that he would get frustrated looking for one particular piece in a giant plastic mountain, and lose interest. I had the foresight (OCD) to keep most of the old boxes and instructions for my Lego sets. So, I decided it would be best to separate them all into their respective sets and meter them out to the boy over a longer period of time. Always one for extensive planning (OCD again), I also decided it would be easier to sort them out sooner rather than later. Once he gets older he will be anxious to "help" me sort them out which will undoubtedly turn into him eating them when I'm not looking. So, I pulled them all out of the closet yesterday and set up shop in the spare bedroom. After opening up all the boxes and spreading them out, I asked myself "What have I gotten myself into?"

As you can tell, I did have a system of organization. The only problem is that I last used that system 10 or 15 years ago. As you can see, I wasn't exaggerating when I said 10,000+ pieces. You can see how this might be a little much for a 5 or 6 year old. So, I've resigned myself to the fact that I will be spending the next few months scratching through these boxes in my free time. I managed to sort out about 1% of them in a couple hours last night, so you do the math. The next hurdle will be finding a place to put the growing number of completed sets as the storage boxes will still contain pieces not yet used. We'll see.

In preparing for this little project, I did stumble on a neat website. I knew there were a few sets that I no longer have the instructions for and wondered if I might find them online. Did I ever. I know Aunt Shauna and Uncle Logan will probably be the only Kermitt readers interested in this, but check out this site... http://www.hccamsterdam.nl/brickfactory/theme/index.htm . I was quite impressed. I'll keep you updated on my progress as I trudge through this little project. Now watch, after all this Nathan will probably end up not giving 2 hoots about Legos.