Since the boys are absolutely in love with all things Lego, I bought tickets for us to attend KidsFest in Pittsburgh. We booked a hotel room for two nights and made a mini-vacation out it!
We didn’t tell the boys what we were doing in Pittsburgh so they were BEYOND excited when we walked into the Convention Center and they started seeing Lego signs everywhere!
When you first walk in, you’re greeted by tons of life-sized Lego statues. They were absolutely amazing!
The Harry Potter statues were my favorite but the boys liked the Star Wars stuff.
Hogwarts!
The Whomping Willow!
The bridge that went “boom”. 🙂
“Why don’t you confer with Mr. Finnigan? As I recall, he has a particular proclivity for pyrotechnics.” I heart Maggie Smith. 🙂
We bought those yellow minifigure T-shirts pretty early into the KidsFest session. There were soooo many boys there that it was impossible to find our kids in the chaos. The bright yellow shirts helps tremendously.
The T-shirts were bought after about 5 minutes of the boys playing in this big brick pile. I lost track of Matthew about 4 times in that span (he was in the pile, he just moved to a new spot and was difficult to find).
Matthew jumping in like it was a mountain of snow while Ian watches from the edge.
There were a bunch of Lego creations that were on display. The detail and scale of these models were absolutely amazing!
Ian and Matthew loved the car racing section the best. You built cars at nearby tables then took turns racing them down ramps.
Each KidsFest has an area called Creation Nation. Visitors can build a creation and the staff put it on a map of the USA. It’s really neat to see your piece of art included in a map that takes 2+ days to finish.
The map is starting to come together!
I saw a Mickey in Florida!
Ian and Matthew grabbing bricks to build their portion:
Matthew and I worked together to build this:
Dropping it off and showing where he’d like it on the map:
It was put next to the red, white, and blue striped building with the black roof. Do you see it? Dead center of the picture.
I liked this rainbow!
See the enormous red statue in the middle? Then the lime green pyramid in front of it? Ian’s creation is the multi-color building directly in front of the lime green pyramid.
Do you see the Statue of Liberty? 🙂
Checking out some SpongeBob stuff with Matthew…
Playing with Lego silverware, Crabby Patty, french fries and pickle:
Ian and I created masterpieces for the Lego Art Gallery:
He changed his after he saw my “A” on the wall. Silly boy.
The boys each drove a Lego monster truck through an obstacle race course. Their racing techniques perfectly matched their personalities.
Ian was all business.
He avoided all obstacles.
He got to the finish line ages before his competitors. Always focused on winning. LOL
Matthew didn’t really know how to work the controller but didn’t want any help figuring it out. Always Mr. Independent.
He took the long way through the course and may have attempted to hit each obstacle twice. LOL
He was the last one across the finish line but I have no doubt he had the most fun. LOL
Just doing a little building while Mike and I sit for a bit.
While the boys did a little building, Mike and I watched the results of a contest behind us. Teams of kids were asked to build bridges out of Legos. After the bridges were built, the host put weights on them to see how strong they were. The last bridge standing held a recording-breaking 135 pounds before collapsing. It was really neat to watch.
This was the record-breaking bridge. There was a huge crowd gathered to watch. The kids sitting on the floor were the various teams that participated.
One last picture before leaving the Convention Center:
Here are pictures from the Lego KidsFest website from the Pittsburgh show. There is a picture of the finished Creation Nation at the bottom of the page.
http://www.legokidsfest.com/past/PP2012/index.html
After the show was over, we went to grab lunch and did a little sight-seeing.
The one thing I really kind of wanted to do in Pittsburgh was ride one of the inclines. We lucked out because the Monongahela Incline was pretty much right across the street from the area where we ate lunch.
The view from the observation platform at the top:
Heinz Field:
This building was the station at the top of the Incline:
My children blinded by the sun:
The ride back to the bottom:
After that, we went back to the hotel to swim, nap, and just relax. I went out for dinner and drinks with a friend from Pittsburgh while Mike put the boys to bed. The next morning, we went to the Carnegie Science Center for a few hours.
The science museum was RIGHT next to Heinz Field. These pictures are from the museum parking lot.
There was a maze shaped like a brain right outside the entrance to the museum. The boys had a ball running around the maze. 🙂
Inside, Ian did this space/weight-less/rappelling thing. He got about half way up before he freaked out about it and had to come down again. LOL
A flight suit worn on the International Space Station:
There was a submarine outside but we never got a chance to see it.
There was a REALLY cool robot exhibit. R2D2 and C3pO were there!
Ian really enjoyed playing air hockey against one robot and I really liked watching one robot shoot some hoops!
Matthew liked looking at the fish in the coral reef ecosystem:
We bought tickets to the holiday laser show in the Planetarium. The show was a bit long and Matthew and I both fell asleep. LOL
After that we decided to leave. There was still a bunch we wanted to see but we needed to get home to get ready for the upcoming work-week. It was a fun trip and I definitely think we’ll be back!