Brickfair 2017- Chantilly, Virginia

Last year my son wanted to go to Brickfair (lego convention) when he found out that members of his online Bionicle podcast would be there. It was a really neat experience, and so he found out they'd be back again this year he wanted to attend again. This is the last weekend, before school starts so we decided this would be a fun way to end the summer.

This year, there were a few additional members from the podcast that were not there last year and so the first thing we did was wait in line to meet them. Even though the podcast members are basically a bunch of kids themselves, my kids think of them as celebrities. It was fun to see their excitement getting autographs and pictures. 

My boy was thrilled to get the chance to chat with his favorite podcast members. He also had everyone sign the back of his TTV podcast shirt. 

Sage was recognized right away, and stole the show again. :)  She finally got to meet her favorite podcast member, Purple Dragon (girl in the back) and there was a lot of hugging and crying going on. It was super sweet. :)

Brickfair is always pretty overwhelming! It was really large and there were so many people! One of the rooms had all the lego models on display. These are not sets you can buy, but models people created on their own just using lego pieces. They were truly amazing! i'm sharing a couple of my favorites.  There was also an area for venders with Lego sets, mini figures and custom pieces for sale. They had bingo going on all day. It was free to play, and you could win lego sets if you were lucky.  In a second room there were more displays, bounces houses and lego vending machines, an area for kids to build legos and a snack bar.. 

 The Harry Potter Quidditch pitch was my favorite. The details are unbelievable. Harry and Malfoy are both on broomsticks in the field. You can see Snape, Hagrid, Dumbledore etc up in the stands. i could have stood there all day looking at all the details and finding different mini-figures we recognized.

i'm normally the one to take pictures, but my son really wanted to take the photos this time so i (reluctantly) gave him my camera. i ended up with about 400 slightly blurry pictures to sort through. :) He did get a few good ones though.

There were tardises everywhere! It was fun to see a tardis in almost every display. This one was especially clever,  if you peek inside the door you'll see it really is bigger on the inside. 

One of my favorite things is the 2-d art. Some of the pieces were so amazing, and to think they were all done with legos. Just crazy. This was my favorite.

There was a  crane machine that was really fun and one of my favorite parts of brickfair. It would actually pick up scoops of legos! It was .25 to play or 6 scoops for $1. They had ziplock baggies there so you could collect your legos.  We had to wait in a long line to try it, but it was so much fun! You really ended up with a lot of legos for your dollar!  We are already planning to go back next year, and i'm going to save my dollars for the crane machine. tee hee. So fun.

This was our last real hurrah before school starts again. We already have one back to school night done and one more to go. Then we head back to school Thursday. i'm so not ready. 

We really enjoyed the Brickfair, and plan to make it an annual back to school trip.