Hoth Version 1.0

As the culmination of the birthday advent calendar Rebecca put together for me, I constructed the Hoth base Lego set. Since the very first time I saw the Star Wars trilogy, the Empire Strikes Back was always my favorite, and the scenes on Hoth ranked the top in that movie. I think I was drawn to the snow scenes because of fond memories playing in the snow with my brother.

Indy was very interested in the construction process. Luckily, he never got his paws on any Lego pieces

Once the base was finished, I added in the rest of my sets and figures. It was a sight to behold. 

Much like the movie, the rebels didn't really stand a chance. 

I'm going to vote for Indy being a Wampa this year for halloween. I also plan on using basic blocks to make a more impressive Hoth base for future epic battles. "Imperial troops have entered the base!

Keith's Birthday Advent Calendar

Another year, another birthday and Keith is now 29.  Last year I gave Keith the LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar (7958) at the beginning of February. I was thrilled when I saw that Lego released another advent this year (LEGO 2012 Star Wars Advent Calendar 9509) but quickly discovered that the set contained mostly items from movies 1-3. The original trilogy pieces were Hoth troopers... which was both a good thing and a bad thing. Since Keith has been collecting the Hoth series, I decided that it would be fun to create a custom Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar myself (and with a lot of help on Ebay.)

On Ebay I found some specialty figures from older sets.  Thanks to the Thanksgiving Death Star Adventure, Keith already owned minifigures of most of the main characters.  

Jacob got into the advent action by contributing some items from his own collection.  Endor Luke and some troopers and bikes.  

I realized that I had so much stuff that it was hard to divide this into a 20 day advent, but I had a lot of fun trying.  My favorite day was day 19, where there was a Death Star Orb filled with 13 storm troopers.

I hope that I haven't set a precedence that I will make a custom advent every year, especially since we have run out of room to display these so some will need to live in a box in the closet.  

Happy Birthday, Keith! 

Keith ran a Half Marathon!

I recently finished the Chicago half Marathon! The weather was perfect I was able to finish in 1:49:18! Huge thanks to Ryan for giving me a Garmin GPS watch, it was super helpful in training. It makes it very easy to both adjust run lengths on the fly and maintain a set pace. It was hilarious during the race there were the telltale beeps from all around me at each mile. There also was an especially hilarious sign a spectator was holding saying, "Don't worry baby, if you pass out I'll pause your Garmin." 

I based my training on the Hal Higdon novice program condensed into eight weeks with the Wednesday cross training as intervals. The hardest part was consistently making time to run four times a week, but the miles added up, I ran 105 miles in August! 

I have no plans for doing a full marathon, but some friends and I are going to do the hot chocolate 15K  in November and I'm really excited to run a run the Monster Dash 5K in October with Rebecca. Costume suggestions anyone?

--------------------------------- Did you take any pictures at our wedding? Please send them to us!