JOURNALING: It was a well staged surprise that began a little over a month ago when Tom was browsing the Brickmania.com website and happened to see that they hold open houses on the second Saturday of every month. We logged it into our calendars and decided not to mention anything to Nicholas because a lot can happen when you make plans that far out - plus its just fun to mess with him a bit. We told him that we were going to Minneapolis, but billed it as a routine trip to IKEA and then threw in mention of some dress shopping (for me) just to really make him dread the trip. We get so few perks as parents, so I like to make the most of it. When we got to the warehouse I tried to draw his attention away from all the signs announcing where we were, but eventually he caught sight of one. They spent over an hour inspecting all the fine details of the displays and Nicholas walked away with some new BrickArms for his collection - then we grabbed a quick lunch at the Edina Grill (best grilled cheese sandwich on earth) and headed to the Mall of America to check out the newly unveiled LegoStore remodel. The main store had been shut down for months while they tore it down to the floor and started rebuilding it again -and the new design is nothing short of spectacular. It was the perfect trip for two Lego uber-fans, and Nicholas wound up walking away with a few more kits in tow. He billed it as the best weekend of his life but weve heard that before - usually whenever Legos are involved, actually! And no dress shopping, after all.

MATERIALS: Template from Papery Templates 4 by Amy Martin; Background paper from Little Honeybee; gingham paper from Focal Point; bricks (recolored), button (recolored), tag and bow (recolored) from Creator; Date stamp from Modern Dates all by One Little Bird; off-white paper and drawn circles from Dialogue by Paislee Press & One Little Bird; Crinkle-bets Alpha (Lower Case) by Zoe Pearn; Font is Pea Devon from www.kevinandamanda.com