Boy, was that a long weekend!

Drove up to Seattle on Friday, leaving at 6:30 a.m. with my kids and friend Bob Kojima, and we made excellent time to the Seattle Center in the wife's minivan. My other friend Steve was supposed to come up with us, be he decided to drive up the night before. Friday was kind of a slow setup day, and I managed to get my lone moonbase set up without too much trouble. I admit to not helping nearly as much with setup as maybe I should've, but I claim prior exigencies with having my two boys to watch over.

The MOC display area was bigger than last year, and had a full wall that was windows floor to ceiling, so the lighting was better. The moonbase layout stretched down the center of the room, with town & train on another end (sparsely populated but the buildings by Jeff Pelletier were excellent, and Steve Barile's trains were likewise great), and the kids build area past that. The nearer wall held a long Castle display, including a blue Helm's Deep, a black Ninja castle (which I partially helped build), and other assorted medieval scenes. There were a lot of sculptures, including a really nifty totem pole by organizer Wayne Hussey. My white moonbase module got a few compliments, nestled up against Bob's Moonbase Disco.

There were only a couple of Bionicle models, but one was really good. Oh, and let us not forget the pyramid under construction, which was close to being my favorite. (The rest of my NWBC pictures are on this Brickshelf gallery.)

I spent most of the weekend farting around with my friends, participating in some of the roundtables, piping up during the keynote speeches and generally being a pain in the butt. It was fun. I took the kids to the Space Needle for a photo op (the pictures turned out great), ate waaaaaay too much fast food (burp), and stayed up far too late.

Oh yeah, and spent about $200 on brick. Yay me!

I ended up winning a door prize and so did one of my kids... so to make it even I had to of course get the other kid a set too. Can't have hurt feelings. And Daddy has trouble sharing sometimes.

My kids both helped in the Brick Bazaar, helping sell stuff, and making a little money on the side. One of the more popular vendors was BrickArms, which manufactures custom minifig weaponry. It's much better than what LEGO has produced, and both my kids spent their hard-earned on some of them.

The set draft (combining parts and splitting up the booty) got started late and took until about 11:30 Saturday night to finish. I was wiped and the kids were asleep on their feet. We slept in the next morning, and almost missed the Wacky Races, which I participated in. I'd built a racer that was basically a Toa kneeling on a wheeled platform, with little spring-loaded cannons that would (supposedly) shoot off the sides and top after it had traversed a ways. Unfortunately, the entire thing exploded at the base of the ramp, but oh well. It was clever, if not particularly functional, and got a laugh - which is all you could ask for.

The radar dish didn't get hooked up to anything, so it didn't really get put out for display.

I also ran into Swert and his dad on Friday, we had a nice little chat for a few minutes. He was the only BZP member I ran into, that I knew of, at this event.

The public hours on Sunday ended at 4:00. My MOC was packed and in my hands by 4:05, and by 4:15 we were on the road. I had some mad money burning a hole in my pocket, so we headed to the Bellevue LEGO store again, and I dropped another $75 on Pick-A-Brick and polybags before heading home. So, mission accomplished. It was a long weekend, but a good one.