Tinker Toys

Jason had the great idea to buy Rudy some tinker toys. Man, those things are AWESOME! The possibilities are endless, and I don't think you could ever grow out of them. Example: behold the awesome trebuchet Jason made in like 30 minutes while Rudy was napping and I was gardening:

Jason's filling his counterwieght bucket with just the right amount of coins from our change jar.

It was actually the trebuchet that inspired the tinker toy purchase. Jason's had an itch to make a trebuchet for months and months. Now that he's on a forced summer vacation (did I post about this? UVU decided to cancel all the classes Jason was going to take this summer. Bittersweet news, since though it pushes graduation back, it does allow for some rockin' family time.) Anyway, now that he's on a forced vacation, he has time to consider the construction of such an awesome weapon of destruction. (They used these to siege castles back in the day.)

Originally, he was going to construct a giant one out of PVC pipe that would be capable of launching rotten fruit or water balloons, or whatever. After working out all the details, however, he discovered his little project was going to be a bit expensive and very bulky. Seeing as we have very limited resources in both the finances and space categories, my wise and practical husband came up with the perfect solution: an investment in our children's future. (I bet Rudy and his future sibs will get into better colleges 'cause they played with tinker toys) ;) Anyway, the tinker toy version of Jason's master plan wasn't quite as powerful as the PVC pipe one would have been, but it was still dang cool. And even cooler, the trebuchet can be taken apart and built into thousands of other dang cool things, such as this little push car Jason and Rudy made.

I'm so glad we have this cool new set of creative toys neatly stored in Rudy's toy drawers, rather than some mammoth (albeit cool) PVC trebuchet filling up our entire walk-in closet. Way to go Jason and your practical mind. :)