Doctor LEGO

Dear Atria,
Do you like LEGO? Did you ever play with it? What did you build?
I have to admit that although I am a grown up man (well... not to say 'an old man') I really enjoy playing with LEGO. I wouldn't buy it for myself (I don't think it would be appropriate... what do you think? :-) ), but recently I had a pleasure of helping one little 5 year old boy Ruben to build an impressive collection from LEGO.
Ruben received few boxes of LEGO for his Christmas present and they were for ages 8-14, so well above his age. He is however a very clever, bright and ambitious little boy, so he decided to build them anyway. He asked for my help and I was more than happy to help. Well... I guess you figured out by now that I wanted to play with LEGO myself :-)
We spent couple of days on and off building and the result was the impressive collection you can see in the picture on the right.
I have to say that most of the job was done by Ruben himself. He did brilliantly. He had a lot of patience and determination to finish the project. I was just giving him a bit of guidance and busting up his confidence. We had a lot of fun building, looking at the pictures, separating parts, working out the mechanics, planning and following the little instruction booklet. During the course of our project Ruben was calling me 'Doctor LEGO' and I was acting like I was a LEGO doctor. It was fun :-)
When we finished the build we showcased the result in front of the whole family and I awarded Ruben a title of Doctor LEGO too. He received an official certificate to that respect and he was very proud of his achievement.
Building LEGO together strengthen my friendship with Ruben (it's a family activity and most enjoyable when you do it together), gave both of us sense of achievement, tickled our imagination and creativity. 
As you can see in the pictures our projects were quite technical; there are many moving elements there, traps, catapults, moving door, prison gate etc and I believe building them thought Ruben simple mechanics and problem-solving. Afterwards he was playing with his creations and that was a feast for his imagination.
I hope one day me and you can build something together. You are never too old for LEGO :-)

SOME FACTS ABOUT LEGO

• Lego was first built in 1932 when Danish carpenter went bankrupt
  
• With little carpentry work, he began building wooden toys in his workshop - starting with a wooden duck
• He named his company LEGO - from the Danish from 'leg godt' - 'play well'
• The phrase also translates as 'I put together' in Latin
• The first sets - for a townscape, space scene, and castle, were manufactured in 1978
• The company released different skin colors for LEGO Basketball for 2004
• LEGO produces nearly 20billion LEGO bricks a year - or 36,000 a minute
• LEGO also makes 306million (tiny) tyres a year - more than any other 'tyre' manufacturer