February 15: The Village

M. Night Shyamalan's experience in creating his village wasn't such a good one, as those of you who paid the $7 box office ticket price might recall. Fortunately, the one that me and my kids built on this day was much more successful. Being a bank associate, I'm lucky enough to be able to have President's Day as a paid holiday. Throw in the fact that my daughter is home from school this week for Winter Break, and you have the recipe for something fun and crazy. So, we seized the day! We went into every applicable closet, searched every last nook, and we pulled out all of the super heroes, Barbies, LEGOs, Lincoln Logs, building blocks and anything else we could find and we assembled an entire universe through the halls and bedrooms of our upstairs. Our own "village" if you will, minus the crazy elders wearing strange monster-like attire in an effort to scare the younger generation (see M. Night Shyamalan reference in the opening). It took us a few hours to put it all together, but the end result was pretty spectacular! Beginning in my son's room, we had the Pirate community and the the super hero genre, which extended out into the hallway.



There, we slowly transitioned to the doll house community and several Barbie vehicles traveling down, what we deemed as, "main street"; which ended in the captivating Barbie castle high atop the hill.



Continuing past the royalty, we created our own zoo from Lincoln Logs and building blocks; complete with a Thomas the Tank Engine LEGO train!


Of course, by night's end we had to take the whole thing down. Still, building it with my kids, and playing for the bulk of the evening, was well worth the hour of labor required to clear the hallway and return the upstairs to just an upstairs again.