Legos!

A friend of our family, who is a librarian at G's school, recently gave us a really old set of Technic legos.  P was so inspired by it that he bought this tackle box to organize it.  He even used his allowance to do so. 

P's allowance is a funny thing.  He never used to have one.  We never were on a budget, then when we were, he was sort of exempt, but never spent money.  Then when he was working in Jacksonville, he had lunch money that was enough for him to have a little extra.  Then when he started working from home he realized he wanted to have some money for things like tackle boxes for legos.  So he asked for an allowance.  90% of the time he just uses it to buy treats for the kids.  He's so great.

 

We have this little sunk down area by the fireplace.  It's one of my favorite places in the house.  It's really an elegant step down lounge and bar, I guess.  But for us it is the toy area.  The bar area has low counters that are perfect for the kids.  I recently put down some plastic lamination in the bottom of the (unplumbed) sink so the kids can use it as a lego bin.  I saw "Escape from Witch Mountain" when I was a kid and remember a scene of a fantastic playroom with a soda fountain kitchen.  So it seems particularly magical to me.

It's interesting going back through movies that I felt were formative in my childhood.  Some of them are so inappropriate!  Others are just weird.  I watched "Maid to order" the other day because I was curious about her transformation from spoiled brat to... better?  Weird.  I think a lot of movies don't help kids learn how to deal with the real world.  They are escapist and that's not like, a good thing.