Georgia Festival of Trees: Christmas Brick Challenge

"There! I'm finished!" Benjamin declared. "Bare minimum—I get third place."

We told him that it was the experience of completing the challenge that was important, not winning. And he was satisfied with that because he honestly made a fantastic creation. 

It had two houses, decorated inside and out, a mountain with a cave inside, a fishing pond, a cozy fire, a snowball fight...it had just about everything imaginable. He originally named it "Christmas Truce" after the story of the Christmas Truce during WWI because the two warring groups in Star Wars are cooperating in this scene. Benjamin can tell you what the warring groups are...

When he added the cave I guess he tacked on "and Discovery" to his title, so it because "Christmas Truce and Discovery."

Rachel said he had to repeat the name at registration a handful of times before they got it. But that's okay. 

On Wednesday, Benjamin, Miriam, and Rachel all volunteered at Georgia's Festival of Trees, which was convenient because that happened to be one of the drop-off days for LEGO creations. Andrew's been out of town all week (he just got home this evening), so it was a super convenient way for Benjamin to get his creation downtown since he was able to carpool with everybody else. 

We don't have many youth. They literally took two vehicles downtown. 

Anyway, the kids had a fun time volunteering and Rachel helped Benjamin drop off his LEGO creation to be judged and put on display. And everything turned out just beautifully. 

Benjamin has spent the past few days feeling a bit like a nervous wreck, knowing that they were judging the builds on Friday and would announce the winners sometime today. He kept checking and checking and...they did eventually announce the winners "today" but not until after dinner and I guess he was otherwise occupied and forgot to check before bed. 

Grandpa came over to babysit tonight so Rachel, Miriam, and I could attend the adult session of Stake Conference (they're not adults, but Rachel drove us there and Miriam and I were in charge of the music), so they watched a movie and things. That helped to take his mind off things.

Here's the outside of the mountain:

Here's a peek inside one of the houses:

The little "splash" under the fish is one of my favourite details:

But, honestly, this little guy shoveling snow is just about my favourite part:

My relatives in Alberta are showing off all their snowy pictures today. They just had a big storm, so everything looks just beautiful, though there was a lot of shoveling to do. My mom's cousin Lori and her husband Jim spend quite a bit of time decorating their yard for Christmas (they've won a few contests themselves in this department!) and Jim posted a picture of their snowy yard today:

I'll bet they wished they had a robot to shovel for them!

Benjamin's favourite detail is this string of Christmas lights that he painstakingly put together:

It ended up being quite a busy scene, but he worked really hard to bring little details to life (and I worked really hard digging through all our LEGO bins to find all the white bricks possible). All his work paid off because...

He won third place!

There were three categories: master builder (grade 10 through adult), experienced builder (grades 5 through 9), and novice builder (grades K through 4). He placed in the "experienced builder" category. 

This will be very exciting news for him, I'm sure! We're proud of him for working so hard on his creation—it turned out awesome!

I wish that I had realized this was a thing earlier. This is only the third year they've done it (I think) and the ad for it just popped up for me one day and I was like, "Oh, Benjamin would love this!"

And now that I'm fully aware of it...this is totally something we should have been encouraging Rachel to do with gingerbread starting years ago. I knew it was a thing in Utah...but I guess I just never realized it was a thing here. 

So, sorry, Rachel, for not knowing about it and thus not encouraging you to shoot your shot. One of these days you should enter a submission because you're good at baking. 

I'm trying to be better about finding ways to encourage my kids to get involved in things. I grew up feeling timid about these kinds of things (though I don't know why because my grandma was always submitting things to the county fair). I just didn't like putting myself out there, but I've been trying to be better about sending my little creations out into the world with the hope of bringing someone a small piece of joy or hope. And I'm trying to encourage my kids to do that, too—to forge connections, to be part of something bigger than themselves.

It doesn't matter if you win, necessarily. What matters is taking the time to create and share and connect.

But Benjamin is apparently adept at manifesting things. 

Just this evening when Grandpa was over he made some quip about "there's not going to be free stuff..." I can't remember why. But he was alluding to the time I told Benjamin, "It's not like there's just going to be a table with a sign that says FREE STUFF or anything," and then we founded a corner and...there was a table with a sign that literally said "FREE STUFF."

I kid you not. 

So this evening we were laughing about the fact that Benjamin was like, "Third place—bare minimum!"

And, uh, here he is with a lovely third place ribbon. 

Way to go, kid! Way to go!

To see more pictures, you can visit this link (I'm not sure how long it will be active, but it's live for now).