This year for Steve's Birthday we decided to forgo a huge party and I bought tickets to the grand mother of all things Lego...
BrickCon in Seattle.
It was 35$ for a family of four so it was a pretty slamming deal and we invited Charlie's cousin Annie, her husband Todd and their two children Maddie and Ashton.
We met at the Exhibition Hall right under the Space Needle and hopped in line.
Charlie pointed out a gentleman wearing a BrickCon shirt and Pass, flying a Lego Helicopter making all the appropriate helicopter sounds, walking down passed us.
And that was what awaited us.
While we waited in line, I realized that we were slowly descending into the depths of Hells Basement.
We went lower and lower and people just kept getting in line behind us.
We finally got up to the ticket window and purchased our tickets from a harassed looking man.
Steve was positively alive with excitement.
We pushed our way into the dingy basement and Steve's eyes bugged out of his head as we took in our surroundings.
The first thought that came to my mind was, "Well this is what is smells like when there are a ton of dudes in a small space without proper ventilation. Finally, I can cross that off my bucket list."
I bent low to talk to Steve about staying together and as I did the Mom Safety Chat, I started to feel my heart racing and thought for a few seconds about taking a Xanax.
It was close quarters in Hells Basement.
I took a few deep breaths and steadied myself.
The place was pretty cool especially for someone who loves Legos as much as Steve.
They had the Space Needle to scale and all the tables had a different theme; underwater, space, made-up weird shit, and the coolest in my opinion (and the other hundred adults jostling to get their selfie sticks in front of one another) Smurf Village.
We walked around and found a table where you could do activities. It was excellent. Engineers, like real actual college educated engineers, had a company that comes around a teaches engineering type things to children using Legos. As an education enthusiast, I was delighted. Steve had a good time too.Annie, Todd and their kids showed up a little while after we got there and it was difficult to track them down in this beehive of activity. While we were locating them, my stomach gave a huge lurch and kicked it into eat now or everyone shall pay the consequences mode. I yelled "I MUST EAT!" to Charlie and he said "WHAT?" because you couldn't hear anything over the deafening Lego Zealots, so I just beelined for the food.
I happily paid 27$ for a crap turkey sandwich, chips and cookie.
I ate with gusto, ignoring the fact that Steve was eying my brownie and that we had finally met up with the cousins.
Annie remarked my same sentiments about the obvious ventilation problem, I was relieved that it wasn't just the almost panic attack.
We walked around and checked out all the tables, the children transfixed on all the things they could potentially build.
We even found a fully functional R2-D2 being driven around by a surly looking man. Whenever the kids got to close he would just run into them with R2-D2, with a slightly maddened look on his face.We went and grabbed some snacks and discovered a toddler area under the stairs with Duplo Legos to play with. The others had abandoned us, big boys and girls don't need snacks and Duplo.
Just as we were getting settled in and Summers tears started to dissolve, the fire alarm exploded in our ear drums.
"Lets go!"
I looked around and clearly no one thought this was an emergency.
Good. We can get out faster.
I grabbed Summer and quickly walked, weaving my way in and out of the slower moving cattle.
There was a jam at the front doors and I overheard a little boy panicking. "Why aren't we going faster? Why isn't anyone running, Dad?"
"If I thought this was a real disaster, I would pick you up and run over all these people in front of me. Its fine."
I had never been so happy to hear it wasn't a real disaster.
We finally stepped out into the Autumn Sunshine and my heart did a backflip.
I could breathe easier and I wasn't trapped in Deaths Basement anymore.
Thank God!
We milled around for a bit and found our party.We decided to skip out on BrickCon and hang out down at the big fountain so the kids could run around a bit.
It was so nice to be away from that tiny space and in the open air.
The kids ran around and played in the water, it was warm, there were people doing Acro Yoga behind us, life was so much better.
We had lunch and outside the Center House where we ate was a balloon man. He stopped us and the kids automatically wanted one.
He made all the kids balloon swords.
When it was Summers turn he called out, "I haven't forgotten about you Princess, yours is coming right up!"
Summer put on her most evil face and yelled, "I'm not a Princess!"
Ultimately I was taken aback by her rudeness, but this is the sum of all the things I try to teach her on a daily basis. I don't want my daughter to think she is a princess, because she's not, she's a kick ass little lady.
Booya Balloon Man.
In its stead was a children's wonderland.
This park has everything.
Including, but not limited to, a giant spiderweb of terror to climb up and ride down the mega slides attached to it.
Summer and I stayed down on terra firma and played in the little sandy hills while the big kids battled it out in the spiderweb.
The kids were each jockeying for a spot, the ropes shaking with the weight of ten thousand climbing, sweaty, overstimulated children.
There was a gap at the top between slide access and rope spiderweb, children were stuck up their crying, while eager and terrified parents nervously smiled at the bottom shouting encouraging words.
Bigger kids were slamming their way across the gap while the younger ones lost their nerve and clung to the ropes, those parents rolled their eyes and their shirt sleeves to rescue them.
It was like an episode of Gladiator.
Shit was getting real up there.
I couldn't locate the birthday boy, so I sought out Charlie as visions of him laying on the ground with his legs bent backwards slowly floated to the forefront of my mind.
He was staring up into the top of the spiderweb.
"He's up there. He's doing a pretty good job too."
Sure enough, I look up and see a red faced and sweating Steve shaking kids off his pant legs, pulling himself into the slide area.
I was pretty proud of my boy, that thing looked like a psychotic death trap to me.
We let them play for a while longer and enjoyed the last bit of early October sun.
We opened some presents and said goodbye to the cousins at their car and made our way back to ours.
The top of the parking garage had a rooftop garden that we casually strolled through, we looked up to see the Space Needle shining down on us, as the sun set.
We started the day in Hells Basement and ended it in a delightful Rooftop Garden.
It was a great birthday.
Cheers.
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