1,961

I'm sure you're wondering what in the heck that number means?? Well, I'll get to that a little later.

When Gage was born it was pretty easy to keep track of his toys. They were all fairly big and we didn't have that many of them. As he got a little older, he started accumulating more toys. He was very much into toy animals when he was around 12-18 months. I was so excited when I discovered Schleich animals. There was a store in Bozeman that carried them, and every so often we would go to town and get a new animal. Gage's favorite was the elephant. He loved making elephant noises while he used his arm to simulate an elephant's trunk. It was so cute when he would do that! After we had several animals, I kept a running total in my head. I knew exactly how many we had and I always knew if any were missing. I became obsessed with this and virtually any toy that Gage had that had multiple pieces, I knew how many there were and I would always count them when we put them away so I knew if we had them all. Many of my friends would laugh at me and tell me I would eventually "outgrow" that. I did finally "outgrow" counting toys because we have way too many for me to keep track of. I'm still kind of like that with games. I can't stand playing games when all of the pieces aren't there. Emily knows how crazy this makes me because when I was helping her pack, I kept finding different pieces to the DVD Candyland game that I handed down to her. My kids had pretty much outgrown it and I was sick and tired of picking up all of those little gingerbread guys. I would find them all over. I was finding them all over at Emily's too, and I purposefully waited to close one of the boxes I was packing to make sure I had all of those pieces. Even close to the end of packing, I was still finding those stupid pieces and AFTER I had sealed the box! LOL! Anyway, if you haven't figured it out, I tend to have a little OCD.

Today after church as I was trying to think of something to do to keep the kids entertained. Scott was out hunting and I wasn't sure when he was going to get back, so I told Gage he should get out all of his Star Wars legos sets and we'll try to get them all put together correctly. They all have been together, correctly, at one time or another. Gage likes playing with these things, which aren't necessarily built for playing with. When they fall apart, he puts them back together however he thinks looks best. There's nothing wrong with that at all, because I like it that he uses his imagination, but I decided since his birthday is coming up, that we better get them organized and put together because he's wanting more for his birthday. We still have one set that we bought after Christmas last year that was on clearance at Walmart that isn't put together. It is a really big lego set and Gage can't put this one together by himself, so he's been patiently waiting for someone to help him. (He's also forgotten about it, or he would be hounding us on a daily basis to get it put together). Gage started bringing all of his lego sets up and because of my anal retentive tendencies, I decided it would be best to take them all completely apart so we could get them put back together the correct way. Boy was that a STUPID idea! After 4 hours of sitting on the floor trying to get these things put together, I could hardly get myself up! My legs were stiff, my back was killing me and I just plain couldn't move! Gage was a trooper and he stuck with it for quite awhile. Scott helped for a little while, but after getting one of the smaller sets together, he was done. He was more than willing to get supper started without me even asking just so he wouldn't have to endure the torture I was putting us through! I think we got about 5 sets put together, and I worked on it from noon until 10pm!! That number, 1,961, is the number of Lego pieces we had strung out all over the living room floor. And no, for your information, I did NOT count all of them myself. I just added up the number of pieces each box had listed that it contained.

Here's Gage looking for a lego piece. It was almost like looking for a needle in a haystack!

After a few hours of building Star Wars lego sets, and seeing that I had hardly made a dent in the number of pieces that were still strewn about the floor I made the comment, "Boy this was a really STUPID idea!" Gage asked me why I said that. I told him it was because this was a MUCH BIGGER job than I thought it was going to be. An hour or two later Gage mumbled, "This WAS a really stupid idea!" LOL! He bailed on me around 4 pm and went over to the neighbors house to play. I couldn't blame him much. I wanted to do the same thing. The most frustrating part is that there are missing pieces. Hmmm......... I'll bet you can hardly believe that!? I don't know what 7 year old could keep track of that many lego pieces!? I'm doing the best I can, and have discovered that even with missing pieces, you can't really tell it by looking at them. I don't know if I'll ever get them all put together before his birthday, and I'm sure when he sees that I finished another one after he went to bed, he'll be playing with them first thing in the morning and I'll be back to square one. (Just walk away Stacy, just walk away!)