Mr. C received a pile of gifts for his birthday this past weekend.  Large gifts are popular, so he already has a number of play sets.  I’m not sure where we’re going to put everything, we’re running out of room!  For now, most of the gifts are still on the living room floor awaiting final assembly and distribution to where they will reside.

One popular gift is the LeToy Van My First Castle, which he received from his Grandma, my Mom.   It’s actually his second castle from the same company as his Aunt and Uncle gave him a somewhat larger castle for Christmas.

We’ll have to stage battles between the two castles!   This one is red, the other is blue.  Figures are not included, but that’s OK, there are two companies that make great figures for these sets; Papo and Schleich.  We already have a fairly substantial army of figures and horses from both suppliers!

 

 

The castle is a sturdy set made of wood, with high quality paint and details like a working drawbridge.   It took a few minutes to assemble, but it wasn’t too hard, just a bunch of screws and a few pieces with very precise slots and pegs to fit together.

 

 

 

 

 

With some enthusiastic help from Mr. C, here’s what the completed castle looks like:

 

 

But what is the most exciting thing about this for Mr. C?   The BOX of course!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a few minutes of playing with the castle, Mr. C has moved on to thebox and all the other packaging that came in the box.  I may see just a pile of cardboard and foam wrapping to be collected and discarded, but what does he see?

 

 

A corral for a horse:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ammunition for the catapult!

 

 

Yes, a 3 year old with a catapult!  What could go wrong ?  I’m keeping the hard plastic ball that came with this, so he’s improvising his own ammunition. Though I suspect he does know where I’m hiding the ball, we’ll see what happens.

 

 

 

 

A bumpy road for Matchbox cars:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A smooth road for Matchbox cars:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the foam wrapping pads were used to re-enact the opening of gifts from his party.  He would grab a random item, “wrap it up”, hand it to me, and I’d open it, acting surprised of course. Then I’d grab something, wrap it up, and hand it to him to unwrap.   I was surprised at how excited he would get at getting to “open” something up.  I’ll have to remember this for a rainy day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a golf ball!

 

I’ll have to save all this packaging now.