Last Christmas, my parents gave me the Lego Millennium Falcon; the 985 piece Millennium Falcon!!!

It was a daunting task and we had not had the time to put it together (nor the capability of keeping the 5 year old's little fingers out of it ) ~ until Sunday!! We were spending this weekend celebrating my oldest daughter's fifteenth birthday, which was yesterday ~ Happy Birthday!! She loves Star Wars, too, and my hubby offered to keep the 5 year old out of our hair while we set to work putting the Falcon together...FINALLY!! Woo-hoo!!

We pulled out the card table and chairs so it would be portable, as I didn't think we would actually get through its entire construction in one day. Then, I got out the box and opened it up to find all these bags of little, tiny pieces!!! Wow! What were we getting ourselves into!!??!?!?? THEN, I pulled out the directions... I said, "It's a book. It's not instructions; it's a BOOK!" So, we laughed about that for a couple of minutes and then got to work on page one of the BOOK of instructions.

It was exciting, though, to find the little pieces of the Lego people inside the bags (and they were all spread out in the bags!!)!! I decided to try to find the people first... I found Han!! Woo-hoo!! I found Han's body! Then I found his hair! Yea! I found Chewie's body! I found C-3PO's body, Leia's body, and the Snowtrooper's body! I had all these body's and no legs!!! Then I found all of their hair! Yea! Eventually, I found everyone's legs, so we were good!

I decided that Han was going to oversee the construction of his Millennium Falcon...

We decided we also needed inspiration and to help keep the 5 year old preoccupied a bit, so we put in the Muppet Show with Mark Hamill, R2-D2 and C-3PO as guests! She loves that show!

The building commenced! Everything was going along smoothly except for one small issue... the card table was padded. Every time we would put pieces together and we would press down on them, other pieces would pop off! It was so frustrating!!! The table was just not firm enough to put Legos together!!! GRRRRR!

We considered moving to the dining room table, but I was still concerned that we wouldn't complete the project in one day, so it could get messed up or lose pieces, etc. Plus, the 5 year old eats at the table and food spillages could occur ~ yada, yada, yada... Next idea! My oldest daughter has this little white table in her room!! It's solid, firm, small... PERFECT!!! We pulled it into the living room, moved what we had constructed so far, put the card table away, put back together what had fallen apart from the squishy conditions of the other table and were back to business!!! Woo-hoo!!!

Things were moving along just great! AND, it was actually starting to look like the Falcon at last!!! We started to take pictures of our progress! We got to the point where we were putting together the Falcon's butt! Interesting part of the ship to put together...

While we actually attaching that part, we had a malfunction in the construction process!! An explosion occurred!! It was awful! I'm not even sure who did it now, but one of us pressed too hard and part of the Legos came off and we had to put a whole section back together again!!! Arrrrggghhh! We were both freaking out! Then, we were both saying, "ok, don't panic, just put it back..." Luckily, only one side was messed up, so we could just look at the other side to put it back. Whew! Back on track...

My daughter joked and said, "The stormtrooper blew up the ship and we haven't even made his gun yet!"

Then, we got the front side of the ship assembled and attached without an incident.

So, the inside was looking really good!! By this time, we had gone through the Muppet Show twice and were starting another movie! The 5 year old would come and watch us every once-in-a-while. My hubby came over and helped put a few of the pieces together, too!

We were starting to work on the outside of the Falcon and it was really looking good!!! We were also starting to think that we might actually get the whole ship done in one day! Yea!

As it was getting later in the day, my daughter kept asking, "well what about this part of the ship?" I would tell her that we were not there yet. "Patience, young Padawan."

I must way, it was exciting when we finally put on the juts out front and the cockpit! Yippee!!

Once we had all of the pieces finally put together and the top on, the Snowtrooper's gun made, and everything in place, including the long-lost escape pod, it was time to play!!!

After 10 hours of construction time, building the Millennium Falcon is not something I want to do anytime again in the near future!!! It was fun, though, and I wouldn't have traded that time with my family for anything in the world!

Fun with Legos!! Now, I need the new Darth Vader TIE Advanced!! Hee hee!!