Model Building

         Our local hobby shop did not survive the pandemic. Though from the sign on their window, they never planned to. They have been struggling for years as "Amazon's showroom" where they would occasionally sell a few small items and people would look at the larger items in the store and then leave and order them on Amazon. That's rough. I understand the allure of a bargain, but I also understand supporting local business and the beauty of being able to walk into a store and buy something without having to wait for it to arrive in the mail. It was sad that they were closed.

         Apparently they had recommended a couple of other fairly local hobby shops. The other day we went to one of them to see if they had some specific parts Ethan was looking for. I was still on the hunt for horses to fit my tiny green barn. I also always like to see diorama making materials and try to come up with ideas. 

      I asked the man behind the counter if there was a scale between N and HO and he said no. Which means if I want horses for my green barn, other than the wooden ones, I am going to have to make them myself. I don't see that happening any time soon. I didn't end up buying any items for making dioramas, since I didn't have anything I was thinking of making in mind at the time. But there is no reason I can't make some plans and gather supplies at another time. Now that I know what they carry. I did buy some more tiny Christmas lights for my tiny tree. 

      What I was not prepared for was having to tell Travis that all the toys he was asking about were in fact model kits. He asked for several and I said they are kits, you have to build them. And then he insisted he wanted to build them. I had no idea if that was true, or even if he fully grasped what that meant, but I said OK to the Mystery Machine set since it claimed to be an easy snap together model requiring no glue or paint. OK. 

         We did not put it together immediately when we got home, we waited until after supper, got everything set up, and then got to work. Ethan showed Travis how to put on the first wheel, then he put on the rest of them. 

He also worked on many other parts of the construction. 

     Including putting together the 3 characters that came with it. Travis stayed entirely focused the entire time. It was very cool. 

     In the end Travis had a new Mystery Machine, Fred, Daphne, and Scooby Doo that he made himself. It looks like Ethan and I have new gift ideas for Travis as well. This company makes other model kits and I am pretty sure there are also other companies that make snap together, no paint needed, kits. Making and building things is always cool and it is nice that we have a way to get Travis into some of it now too.

     Now that we have found an activity that Travis seems interested in, that involves other people and no electronics, I want to do more. And then maybe once we have done several of the easy ones we can build on it and get harder kits. This could be a whole new building/making/creating adventure!