Lego Weekend

This past weekend we flew up to Seattle to attend Northwest BrickCon 2007 and we had a blast! Despite hours of careful packing, Ryan's creations did not arrive as he had hoped so Friday and part of Saturday were spent rebuilding. We also had a couple of problems displaying my mosaic because the large easel Ryan borrowed from work had a hard time holding the weight, but it all worked out in the end.

Skinny Ryan rebuilding his floating rock and eating Lego. I now understand why I've seen Lego with teeth marks at home.



Ryan's floating rock.



The floating rock display. The shorter one with the red roof is also Ryan's.



The mosaic window display. It was a good idea for them to display them like this so you could get enough distance to be able to see them well, but the glare was really bad for pictures.



My first creation!



Helping build the tallest Cafe Corner.



Steve adding to Cafe Corner. The final building had 22 floors and we each got to take a section home for helping.



I'm 167 Lego bricks tall.



Ryan is 180 Lego bricks tall.



The Space Needle from our hotel room in the morning.



The Space Needle from our hotel room at night.

We had such a great time, but the weekend went by way too fast. We've decided that we need to get there a day sooner and leave a day later next year.

It's Finished!

We're leaving for Seattle on Friday to attend a Lego Convention, so Ryan and I have been busy finishing our projects to display. I was so excited to finish the mosaic last night after a few delays from waiting on parts. We even made a trip to San Diego on Saturday to get some parts from our friend, Gary.

The lighting isn't very good, but we'll make sure to get better pictures of it while it's displayed in Seattle.

Jake and Jenn's Wedding

So when my family gets together, we have a really fun time. Some of us have TOO much fun (I'm looking at you, Uncle Mike...) Here are some select shots from the recent wedding and reception of my cousin Jake to his new bride Jenn in a sunset-lit outdoor ceremony. More can be found in a set on Flickr.

It was so beautiful out after a day of rain.


Brett and Lauren in the fading light.


The family after the ceremony.


Silly Ryan!


After a brief disappearance after the wedding, my Uncle Mike reappeared at the reception in this getup. What a clown.


I love these photos of Dad and Lauren with Uncle Mike. Cheese!


Denise and Derek share a moment.


Awwwww


Nephew Luke belts out a tune on his microspoonaphone. (Photo by Denise)


Dancing in their seats!


We were having so much fun I almost forgot to take photos of the happy couple. This is the best one I had (and it's terrible, I take trashy indoor photos..)

We wish Jake and Jenn a long and happy life together. Thanks for having us at your special party!

It's a BOY!!!

We went in for an ultrasound on Friday and the ultrasound technician said it's definitely a boy, so the Bradley family tradition continues (all three of my siblings had boys first). We were surprised at how quickly she was able to tell us it was a boy, but I guess the little guy just wasn't being shy at all and had his legs spread wide open.

We brought a camera, but there wasn't much to take pictures of.


Our little gymnast doing the splits.


This is such a funny picture...it looks like his eyes are popping out of his head.


Congratulations to Denise and Karen for both guessing correctly! You'll be getting your prizes soon.

Guess the Gender and Win a Prize!

On Friday, Katie and I will be going to the doctor to have an ultrasound, where we'll find our whether we're having a boy or a girl. What will it be? You have two days to place your guesses! Everyone who guesses correctly will win a prize!

Our New Additions

Meet the newest members of our family:

We knew we would be needing a new computer since the one we have is seven years old and isn't able to run the programs Ryan will need for school, so we were checking the Best Buy ads and looking at Dells. Well, after Ryan's first day of school it became pretty obvious that what he really needed was a Mac. We're really glad that Ryan still had a scholarship from high school and was awarded some financial aid, so we were able to cover tuition and the new iMac computer with those.

Watching him open the box was like watching a little kid on Christmas...I really wish I had taken pictures of him! I'm not sure I've ever seen Ryan so excited before.


Our other new addition is an iPod. There was a special deal for students where you get a free iPod when you purchase an iMac, so we're well on our way to being an Apple family! They even do two lines of engraving for free.

Mosaic Update

Well, I've been busy working on the mosaic for the Lego convention next month. It's a lot of fun and doesn't seem to be taking as long as I expected. With Ryan back in school and working later hours I'm spending WAY more time on Lego than he is.

Hard at work


The lighting makes it look a little pink, but here's what I've done so far.

We were still waiting on most of the grey pieces, so I started by doing the white and black. Now it's on to the 5 shades of grey!

Garin's 13th

For his 13th birthday Garin chose to go to Benihana, so the family got to try something a little different than the usual ChicagoRibs/Chilis/ElPaso-type fare.

Philip was our entertaining chef.


Garin, mom and dad chowing down.


Katie and I enjoyed the food, too. I had shrimp for the first time in my life, and it wasn't bad!

We're a Lego Family!

An annual Lego convention held in Seattle is coming up the first weekend in October, so we started looking at plane tickets and decided to go since we found a good deal. Well, I didn't think it would be as much fun if I didn't have something to show at the convention, so I started thinking about what I could do.
Ryan had bought me the two mosaic sets that Lego makes and since I really enjoyed building those we thought it would be cool to do a large mosaic of one of our wedding pictures. Ryan has been hard at work mapping everything out and I was so excited to get to start on it last night!

Ryan had to map out each base plate seperately so we can get it to Seattle.


Hard at work...Ryan didn't tell me there were several shades of grey that look VERY similar!

Baby Belly

We decided it would be neat to have pictures of my growing belly, so we'll be taking pictures each week to show the progression. We took one about a week after we found out we were having a baby and it's really fun seeing the difference.

6 Weeks




12 Weeks




13 Weeks




14 Weeks




6 Weeks vs. 14 Weeks