"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."

It doesn't matter where we go or what we are doing, at some point in the day Opeie will say "take a picture of it!". It all stemmed from the Fox hunt game and because of it my phone is usually full of all sorts of pictures he has requested. We only write about the fox's, but flamingo's and racoons are also taking up space on my phone. He loves taking pictures of his toys too and on a recent trip to Gotham he made it quite clear that the camera needed to be on stand by.

Opeie was eager to include a robot shark infested pool in our game this time and well you know i aim to please when it comes to the boys so we soon had Jokers fun house towering over sharky water.

Opeie comes up with all manner of crazy stories, Seth always comments on how great his imagination is and how much fun he is to play with. Our recent role playing game is a fun story when batman, superman and the red tornado are discussing their dirty capes when the joker (or one of the other villains) lets them know about a dry cleaners. Unfortunately the heroes are usually duped in the back of a van or a jail cell for   Permanent detainment. He does make me chuckle.

As much as I love creating, craft and building I think role playing with toys is great for their imagination and development. The boys really get in to their stories and i love being able to get involved too.

You can't get anything out in the house without the furry member of the family getting involved. Plus a big bowl of water with robot fish is screaming 'come and drink me'.

Having so many super hero toys in the house and two great playmates to go all out with is amazing. Being a dad is everything i thought it would be and more. I'm moulding then in to mini nerdy versions of myself.

"Sometimes that light at the end of the tunnel is a train."

Since our recent purchase of a big mystery box of LEGO and our new found love of LEGO trains, we ended up building a DC Comics inspired Joker train which I wrote about last week. Our track was looking a little bare and while me and Seth were out scooting on friday we walked across a level crossing and feeling inspired he rushed back to build one for his track. I love how he went on Google for some ideas and then sat and built it while we were making lunch.

I wanted to make something fun for the boys to play with too, to add to their new track so while the boys were in bed last night I started to build them a platform based again around their favourite comic book characters, the minifigures have got to get on and off somewhere right?

With some great colourful characters to choose from and base shops and stands on, I had so much fun building. I wanted to build a couple of shops/buildings based around specific characters and their colour schemes so that the boys could use them for their usual creative role play. I started off with one of my favourite DC minifigures 'The Flash' who is manning the Stations information desk and ticket sales. Best man for job of a fast paced railway station I say.

When we purchased The Riddler Chase kit a few months back, I thought it was a little random that he came with a banana but it gave me all the inspiration I needed to build him a Deli/Pizza stall. I love builds like this as you can go all out with the smaller details and with this amazing timeless building toy there is is no end to the possibilities.

I wanted to make use of the large printed, single piece Batman doorway that we got when we brought Opeie the Batman easy build Defend the batcave kit. I love these kits for the larger printed pieces as they are great for younger builders to build around but also look great on custom builds like this. I think it worked perfectly for the exit from the station.

I had no idea who to base the space that was left on as I wanted to build something colourful but then I remembered the custom iPhone cover I built a while back and the character that was sitting In the back of it. The remainder of the platform definitely belonged to Aquaman and it had to be a newsagents. I love the orange, green and yellow colour scheme and it ended up looking great.

A few benches, bins and CCTV and we were ready to add all the other DC characters in or collection. Luckily Mrs M had some work on last night so apart from the rummaging of bricks it was a quiet night making the most of one of my favourite and more creative hobbies.

If your a regular reader to our LEGO posts then you'll know that I like to include ourselves in most of our custom builds and this one was no different, wearing fitting outfits of course.

The boys were super excited when the got up and saw what was waiting for them and they couldn't wait to start adding to their new piece of LEGO railway. This has by far been the best kind of train toy we have had as every piece of it is fully customisable if you have the patience and creativity.

'The Dark Knight Rises' and takes over most of our day.

It seems that today has been pretty much dominated by 'Batman'. The caped crusader pops up on a regular basis during our week in many different ways. This time last year Seth was building an extensive collection of Fisher Price Batman Imaginext which we started after trip to Smyths, It's all he talked about and the collection grew and grew. When we were in Florida back in November we stumbled across lots of them in Target that were 'Target Exclusives' and it rekindled the boys love. Santa also included one of the toys that Seth didn't have. We hadn't taken all of the Imaginext out at once in quite some time so i was pretty shocked when Opeie asked for it all out today and i realised the extent of the boys collection.

As far as younger children's Super hero figures go, this is one of the best ranges released. Boasting a great selection of characters, vehicles, buildings and accessories. The action figures are cute and unthreatening with happy faces and bright colours, perfect for younger super hero entusiasts.

Building a custom DC Lego Aquaman iPhone casing (because how else am i going to spend my spare time?)

Both my creative side and inner geek were working overtime last night when I spotted a Lego mini figure I hadn't seem for some time. Yes a small Lego figure does tend to do that to me. The house was tidy(ish), Mrs M was busy on the phone working and the boys were tucked up in bed so I did what any 33 year old would do in the same situation, I got the Lego out.

The mini figure I had spotted was Aquaman, he had been hiding in the Lego Batman Tumbler that me and Seth had built a while back. He's not one of my favourite super heroes but I have always loved the colours on his costume so I decided to revamp my phone after the Yellow Lego protective phone case I built a few weeks back. Crazy really that I would even go to this trouble over a phone I'm the one in the house that uses it least. I had time to kill though, what else was I going to do?

I'm no Tony Stark but we'll call this phone armour 'Mach III' as I'm in a nerdy mood. I didn't end up using Mach II (The Cat in the Hat case) as it was a bit much. I used the shape from the last build and did half orange and half green but it didn't look right so I added in a yellow belt, changing the phone wallpaper made it look more Aquaman esq but it still didn't look right, I really wanted to include the mini figure so I hollowed out the back to make a little home for him. Not meaning to toot my own horn but it came out far better than I had envisioned it so I was really pleased. I really should knock the phone covers on the head though and get Back to building bigger and better things, it is a head turner though when I'm out and about using it.

A weekend building activity - Building a Lego Batman Tumbler

What do you want to do this weekend Seth? Erm.... I'd like to build a Lego tumbler! Seth could have chosen to do anything but that was his big plan for the weekend. He has been asking me for some time for a Batman tumbler and I'll be honest I've been avoiding it as Seth wanted it built with the Lego instructions we had downloaded online and I was concerned we wouldn't have all the parts. This weekend I finally caved and said I'd give it a go.

The sun was out for a change so there was no way we were going to spend the whole weekend building Lego so after Tae kwon do we headed over to visit auntie Lotty and had a good walk round the park and got the playground all to ourselves which was nice...

We got home at lunch time and once we had eaten we got on with the building.. When you have as much Lego as we do, building from downloaded instructions can be really tedious as it takes time searching for specific pieces, Seth was more than happy to help though and it's always nice spending time playing together. I knew somewhere along the build we would be missing a part, but as with all our builds I tweak them to make them work (I even had to melt and reshape a couple of pieces to make them fit).

It took us two days of serious rooting  but we managed to pull it together, Seth was really excited and kept saying he was really proud of me (so cute), he never said that when i made the Ice-cream parlour and that was from our imagination, kids! Seth's been playing with it none stop which is always great to see and Ive been told were attempting two-faces truck next so be sure to check in on us again. Anyway here's the finished piece...