My youngest son, who just turned 4 not too long ago - has evolved into the official Cthulhu for the Lego Universe. Just replace the victims on this shot of a Vinyl toy available from Brand Fury, with minifigs - and it's spot on. I got him a couple more little Lego trains for his Birthday, since my Dad send some dough, and inside of 10 minutes they were frankenlegos, or disassembled or missing parts.

Couple this with the 4 minifigs who are handless on both arms, or just one and you have widespread chaos and destruction the likes of which our ginormous bag of Lego's has not seen before.

All of this mayhem not withstanding, he really does enjoy himself playing with trains and Legos, but now that he has trains that are Legos - he's a happy camper. Naturally, being 4, his attention span lasts for about one trip around the fish bowl, so he moves on to the Brio trains or transformers quickly. Especially after he disembowels the helpless little Legos, and after they are no longer recognizable - I think he sorta just blows them off.

Speaking of the Brio trains too, they have a couple new bits to add to the regular wooden toys. The smart track, and the Network train toys are pretty sweet, and I think we might have to get some and give them a shot.

The Smart Track trains and track pieces can effect the play experience by adding bits to the tracks. You can control the speed, stop and make an engine blow its whistle by placing little signs next to the smart tracks. They have a station, repair shack and starter kit along with a few add-ons.

The Network series is based on the computers, this is what is says on their website:

BRIO Network is not your classic toy train set. It.s an original world of Rail Play featuring the imaginary creatures who live inside your computer. They drive super-cool vehicles around wooden train tracks. They can listen to their messages and interact in fun, new ways. Though the networkers are inspired by the computer world, you do not need a computer to play with them.

They have a good selection of accessories and kits for this series - which is pretty cool. With email, viruses, trash bins, firewall guy, and a few others. This is pretty well thought out and could be a cool way to get the oldest terror back in to playing trains again - hopefully in a nice way, with his younger brother.....

Santa was extraordinarily good to the DeCoster family this year, and we woke to find a Nintendo Wii snuggled with care under the tree. I have read the reviews, watched people play, heard the media drone on about how they are being used, watched the prices on eBay go ridiculously high then back to normal, and yet I was totally unprepared for how much fun playing it is.

I have found myself playing everyday either just in short burst or at length, but daily and usually multiple times throughout the day. Granted I am still on vacation, but it's a lot of fun. Wii Sports is a great set of games and mini games with the training and fitness modes - so it provides a lot of variation considering it's only really 5 games total. My favorites are bowling, boxing then baseball. I'm getting used to the golf game, but I don't really like the tennis game much. Donovan is really good at the boxing and bowling games, while Dylan just like to drive over everything in Monster 4X4: World Circuit. This is a pretty good game too, and I like the fact that it came with a steering wheel, plus it's not too hard right off the bat and it's pretty easy to get into and start playing and have fun. We also bought Wii Play, which as it turns out, is my least favorite of the games we bought. To be fair, I have only played it for a very short amount of time, so it will be a good game for the kids - but I don't think I will be playing it much.

AWe played for a good amount of time on Christmas day we all wondered how many times across America the exact same scene was unfolding, and judging by how difficult they are to get still; I would have to say hundreds of thousands of times. The Wal-mart in town (Bradford) hasn't had them in stock for any length of time yet, they always seem to sell out the second they get them in. Granted, Bradford is not a big town, or a high volume type of community so they get very few - but the stores in Buffalo didn't have any either, we finally found them out here in Oregon. We even got Grandpa in on the action, and he was kicking some serious rump at bowling, but unfortunately, I didn't have a SD card in the console yet - so sadly there is no proof....

The only downside is that the games are very expensive, $50.00 each, so I will be doing research and renting the game before I go and buy anything. I bought Monster 4x4 on a whim and luckily, it worked out. We all have our own Mii's and Donovan can't seem to make up his mind to what he wants to look like, but he has a lot of fun playing it; and that's the point.

In a fierce battle which raged between Fairly Odd Parents and the final showing of Sponge Bob, three Imperial Troopers gave their lives to uphold the balance of power on Lamintooie.

It's really discouraging to see such carnage wrought by a fun-loving 3 year old. I'm not exactly why it is so much fun to pull the heads, legs, and even rend hands from limbs of these poor, defenseless minifigs. One Trooper is now disabled as he has permanently lost the use of his left hand. Which is slightly better than one of his not-so-lucky Fire Fighter buddies, who no longer has any hands at all.

I set out to build some cool Lego vehicles with the boys this evening before the enduring struggle of bed time ensued, and Dylan proceeded to dismember 2 of these hapless souls before I stopped him. Luckily he only removed the hands from one - and I recovered one hand thus far. He's a strange little beasty - he has done this repeatedly, and I'm not sure why it's so much fun. I never really got into destroying my toys until I got my hands on some Black Cat fire crackers in the 8th grade. The it was all over but the crying, at least for my GI Joe and Star Wars dudes.

Oh well. Survival of the fittest.

They've poisoned the watering hole!

We were outside eating dinner tonight since it was such a gorgeous afternoon - and I managed to catch this just before Donovan shoved his water at me asking why there was a little bug in it and could I see it. I'm not sure how high the temperature finally topped out around, but it was nice! I am hoping for more of the same for some time now - and if I am lucky, we will get the pool out this year.

I already broke in the hammock for the year, and the kids and I had a good swing/lounge session on Saturday afternoon for about an hour.

There goes the neighborhood

Construction crews were running up and down the street today tearing the hell out of the shoulder on our side of the road. They ran a trencher which cut a swath 6 inches deep by two feet wide, swept it, flattened it, sprayed and then paved it. they were working all afternoon and until about 8pm from what I could tell.

This is the real reason the kids were outside, and why I had the camera. They were enthralled by all the equipment, and Dylan kept yelling hi to all the guys and dump trucks - especially the orange ones. I am fairly amazed with the speed at which they progressed, they passed out house and were a quarter mile down the road in about 20 minutes - that thing chews up asphalt and rock like nobody's business. I took a few more shots, but that one pretty well sums it all up.

I have to say I am glad though they didn't leave the 6 inch deep trench in front of our house.

I have never in my life seen a single baby so dedicated to the utter destruction of a single, non-offending object as this one on our way to Pittsburgh on Sunday. I do not know why the photo offended him so, but he was hell-bent to inflict untold carnage unto it. And he succeeded.

It was a picture of him and Donovan, from a year or two ago, and he tore it, crumpled it, folded, threw it, stomped on it, "kweezed it", and ultimately killed it. It was great. The Epson photo paper made very distinct squeaks, creaks and groans while Dylan mutilated for all his 3 year old worth. There was no mistaking who was going to be the victor in this conflict.

He was fired up all day too, slept only for an hour or so up, and was on fire for the rest of the night - up until about 10pm or so.

I think he is going to overtake Donovan as the all-mighty destroyer of things.