Putting Away the Family Legos

At the beginning of the summer, my youngest daughter and I pulled a bag of our family Legos out of my office.  I wanted to open up some space and clean out the clutter, so this seemed like an easy start.  

Years ago, when my girls were young, we introduced them to Legos through the Duplo line.  Those
were fun; they loved the idea of building and breaking apart and building again.  Good times.  A few years later, I bought my oldest daughter her first set of Legos with the Lego Friends line.  This was a fun theme of Legos as it was girl focused in marketing and product.  Over the years we purchased several, well okay, lots of these sets from small ones like the dog training set, to the large sets like the Lego Friends house.  I loved to help them build the sets and play when they were built.  I have no doubt that these Lego friends toys were the most played with toys in the house.  I liked to build my space sets from the 1980's and have space invasions of the Lego Friends town.  They didn't always like that.  Hehehe...

Flash forward to this summer when both of my girls graduated.  One graduated from high school heading to college and the other graduated from 8th grade heading to high school.  They are growing up.  Something I haven't been very supportive of, but there is no stopping it, I suppose.  Anyhow, the youngest and I were cleaning up a tote bag of partially build or broken sets with random pieces spread across the bottom of the bag.  The goal was to figure out what pieces went to which set and deconstruct what was left of the partially build sets.  Lets just say, there was a lot of organizing to do.  As we got started, my daughter decided the best way to get the lose pieces organized with the sets was to just rebuild the sets.  She told me what she needed from the lose pieces and we hunted for them together.  We spent several hours rebuilding about 5 sets that were in the bag.  We hunted, built, talked, shared memories with the sets (I didn't mention the alien invasions), and had a good old time.  It was a nice way to start the summer.  

I couldn't bring myself to tear down the sets we had just built, so we took them to the basement to display and look at for a while.  Our mission was accomplished as we found a home for all of the lose Legos from the bottom of the tote bag.  

Now, school has started.  One daughter off to college and the other navigating the landscape of high school.  It was time to change out the display of Lego Friends in the basement.  I took them down one-by-one and started taking them apart and organizing them in their own Ziploc bags with the directions.  In this process, I was struck.  I will probably never build Legos with them ever again.  I let it sink in.  I will never build Legos with them ever again.  

Of course, the hope is some day when the grandkids come to visit, we will pull those "old" Legos out of the basement.  I don't know what that will be like, but I don't imagine it will be the same as building them with my daughters.  Maybe it will be more wonderful.  I don't know.  Nevertheless, the family Legos are now put away.   

I guess it is just me now as building Legos isn't really my wife's thing, so I pulled out my Star Wars Legos that I have gathered over the years.  I started rebuilding those.  Even though I am building those on my own, I have the memories of all the hours of fun I had with my daughters as children building the Family Legos.  

Coaching

Sixteen years ago, I walked away from coaching competitive high school speech to move on with other parts of my life like becoming a National Board Certified teacher, starting a family, and trying triathlon and marathon racing among many other things.  Last year my oldest daughter decided to try out for the speech team at our high school.  I couldn't have been any more proud and excited for her when she decided to tip her toe into something that I was so passionate about as a high school competitor and coach years ago.  Not really to my surprise but to my complete pleasure, she is pretty darn good and just missed going to our state tournament in her freshman year.  With all of that excitement, I just couldn't help myself when an assistant coaching position opened up; I had to jump back in.  

I have to say that adding this to my schedule has not been easy and quite frankly, it has been quite exhausting.  Working with the kids, however, has been nothing short of pure joy.  I love seeing their faces squish up in doubt when I say, "try it this way."  And when they do, they are surprised at how it sounded or felt.  I love their willingness to take risks, to work hard in practice, and to build their skills.  We are just a month into the season, and we took a small team to their first meet in November.  I loved seeing the nerves of the first competition collide with their confidence after weeks of practice.  A few of our students saw success and some realized that "next-in-to-finals" feeling.  But, they all learned and had fun showing off their skills through performance and public speaking.  This is exactly why I decided to return.  Yes, I'm competitive, and I want the kids to be competitive too, but it is the life-long skills of public speaking that I want them to learn.  I want them to see that practice and taking constructive feedback brings growth and improvement.  

My daughter along with over half the team did not compete because they were busy putting on a musical that weekend, but I am so pumped to see her and her teammates go to their first meet in December.  Even though I don't officially coach my daughter, I get to talk to her about her speech and her delivery.  On a personal level, I am amazed at how much she has grown up in her 15 years.  I couldn't be more proud of being a coach on her team.  I love the sound of that.  I am a coach of HER team.  What more could a father want?  

I think of the students I work with and how much their parents have watched them grow over the years.   I think of the conversations that I have with them and I feel so privileged to be a part of their story.  I am glad I walked away to accomplish the things I needed to over the last 15 years but coming back now has been wonderful on so many levels.  

The Top 5 Series (Intro)

So, my oldest daughter and I have started to challenge each other by asking random "What's your top five..." questions.  Stay tuned here for our topics and lists with some explanation I'm sure.  If you have a Top 5 list for us to do, post it in the comments.