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Sarah Simpson Column: Building the best Family Day with Lego

Little did we know Scotty’s Dog Shack was not a pet store like we guessed
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The details at the Lego exhibition were amazing. It’s a must-see for any Lego lovers out there. (Sarah Simpson/Citizen)

Any time we get to skip a day of work to spend more time with our families it’s a win. Yes, we do get on each other’s nerves, and yes, it usually involves more snack requests and general time spent cleaning up messes, but really, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Family Day long weekend was much welcomed in my household this year.

A month ago, my niece tipped me off about the annual Lego exhibition at the Sidney Museum and Sidney Pier Hotel and the associated Family Day weekend Beacon Avenue Scavenger Hunt that went along with it.

Ever since my son was old enough to grab and hold Lego, he’s been a fan. It began with the giant blocks, then we downsized to Duplo and finally, traded it in for a random bin of Lego that I had as a child. It took years before we bought him an actual set with instructions because he was so into building projects guided by his own imagination.

Over the years, and probably in large part thanks to the Lego Ninjago television series, my child has become somewhat of a Lego fiend. What’s more, he’s pulled our entire family into it along with him to the point that we no longer have knick-knacks and random trinkets on our bookshelves and mantle, we have Lego sets. OK, we also have trinkets and they’re mainly rocks because…kids.

Anyway, when my niece told us about the Lego exhibit, which runs until April, we picked the Family Day long weekend to go because that’s when the Scavenger Hunt was happening. After visiting the museum, the goal was to walk around Sidney’s core and look in the 20 participating shop windows for lettered Lego sets. Once the map was filled with the appropriate letters, we could enter it into a draw for a prize.

“Prize” was a key word for my son. The idea of winning free stuff really motivates him. So, off we went.

Initially it was miserable. The museum was not surprisingly a bit crowded and loud —neither of which my diminutive kids particularly like.

Even so, we looked at the exhibits and entered the ‘guess how many bricks’ and ‘guess the weight’ type of contests inside the museum for smaller prizes and grabbed our scavenger hunt map before it became clear that it was time to get out of there.

Out on the street it was a bit chilly and sprinkling ever so lightly. We made it to about four store fronts before it was decided the ‘hangry’ folks in our party needed to eat — but first we’d stop at Scotty’s Dog Shack to see what letter/Lego set we could nab to put on our map.

Little did we know Scotty’s Dog Shack was not a pet store like we guessed, but a hot dog shop!

My husband has a particular affinity for a good hot dog with all the fixins, so that’s where we stopped.

The mood shift was unbelievable. All of a sudden it was a great day.

With our bellies full, those who had been ‘hangry’ before were now leading the charge and we wasted no time in obtaining each and every one of the 20 letters for our map, even though we only needed 15 to officially enter the draw.

We entered all the extra competitions we could and secretly raced a family to get all the letters (even though they had no idea we were racing them) and eventually wound up back at the museum to hand in our completed map.

We had an absolute blast.

There was just one thing we didn’t accomplish: we could not for the life of us find the Christmas Chewbacca hidden somewhere in the Lego Exhibits within the museum. Knowing the kids were tired from the hunt, their lunch fuel was wearing off, and the noise and crowd in the museum would be a lot, we suggested the extra entry to be gained from finding Chewbacca perhaps wasn’t worth the effort this time around. The kids had other ideas. They searched, and searched, and searched and searched some more.

We simply couldn’t find it. We spent another three quarters of an hour looking and, like many around us, we couldn’t find “Christmas Chewy”. We still don’t know where it was.

I was quite worried this would derail the great day we’d had as a family because when you’re a kid one little thing like that could make or break a day. To my great surprise, the kids were able to let it go.

“That was fun,” my son said in the car. Him agreeing he enjoyed anything is a big win. It was such a great family activity that we all enthusiastically agreed to return next year. That only if another trip to the hot dog shop is also on the agenda, my husband agreed joking.

Lego is expensive for sure. But let me tell you something: it builds more than just structures, vehicles, and imaginations — it builds family, and, to borrow a phrase from the kitschy Mastercard commercials — that’s priceless.



Sarah Simpson

About the Author: Sarah Simpson

I started my time with Black Press Media as an intern, before joining the Citizen in the summer of 2004.
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