joseph's stem course

joseph is shy and sometimes painfully so. i try my hardest to get him to involve himself in things, but it's not always easy (or always possible). recently in the school newsletter, they sent home an announcement about a stem (science technology engineering maths) course, focusing on building techniques with bricks. a lego kind of thin, including the technic style, to build bridges, gears, pulleys etc.

considering his love for lego, i thought it was a wonderful opportunity to get him involved in something that didn't have any of us near him. to allow him to grow, to extend his comfort zone and to just be him. be him with no one from the family to hide behind.

he is actually loving it and seeing these updates from the organisers is amazing. i can see he is enjoying himself. well worth the money i'd say!

 

temple lego

it's june... and we just got this christmas present out of the box and finally put it together. hahaha. there's been a lot going on for us and everyone and somehow it just got put to one side until now. but anyway to showcase it now... i bought this amazing "small temple design" lego set for the kids for christmas, which meant of course that joseph thought it was his... 

doug and him got it out and spent a few hours putting it together and it is so perfect. i love it! perfect design - and they even made the married couple out the front us, as there was hair options... he's a red head and i'm a blonde. it is such a cool set and my favourite bit is the name of the company that makes it: brick 'em young. classic. it will look gorgeous on display in joseph's room. 

president spencer w. kimball said, "it seems to me it would be a fine thing if every set of parents would have in every bedroom of their house a picture of the temple so the [child] from the time he is an infant could look at the picture every day and it becomes a part of his life. When he reaches the age that he needs to make this very important decision, it will already have been made." 

i'm all for it. i can't wait for the day my children get the chance to enter the temple. ❤

lego bricks and pieces

i know after this week i am officially a lego mum. oh my word. joseph has been super lucky and well loved by friends and family over the past couple of years and has received many lego sets, much to his delight - and as a mum, i have to say i've been well impressed with him. he's been very careful with the pieces and has rebuilt the sets over and over and over. he is absolutely lego obsessed. bonus, he likes to follow the instructions and do it "right."

however. he is only five years old now and over time, a few pieces have been misplaced... so doug and i decided we would do something about storage and replacing the pieces that went missing. doug went through and rebuilt every single set, which was not an easy task, especially with said five year old wanting to "help" the entire time, which mostly consisted of him hoarding the pieces doug needed. each of the sets went into a large ziplock bag with the manual once complete and i wrote down any missing pieces (amazingly only 11 in total from all of them) using the set code and then brick codes found in the back of each of the manuals, before each of those bags went into a storage tub. he is now playing nicely by the rules of one set at a time and is thrilled to have a system (he's obviously been brainwashed by his very ocd parents, because he is just as particular as us), so when he is does, he brings it to one of us to "zip up" and then he puts it away before choosing another. funniest thing is, some of the zip lock bags have arrows to show how to close them. heaven forbid that you close them sliding the arrows the wrong way. he has a fit! "no! no mum! slide it the way it says!" such a little character.

anddddd, you can order single pieces online from lego.com. does everyone know that?! massive thanks to my friend for that tip off a few years ago. all of the pieces we needed, minus one, which was part of a disney cars lego set were available, but that was an easy solve... we ordered the same piece, without the dinoco print across it! so easy to do and our lego boy is thrilled to pieces.

heads up though, if you're in australia, the postage is outrageous! $15 for those 11 tiny pieces!i keep reminding myself that i'm the one that wanted them and as it's a demand thing that they can charge whatever they want haha. andddd it's not quick. i ordered in april and they came earlier this week. be prepared for a long wait. but it's done, they are here and everyone is happy.

hooray for lego!