We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?

2nd floor done.

My son says, "Is that where Han Solo says, 'Boring conversation, anyway' and blasts the computers?" Proud moment.

We shall double our efforts

The second floor is a sandwich, and here's a shot of the sliced deli meat and the tomatoes. Gives you a clue how intricate this thing is.

3/4ths of second floor done

Half of second floor done

We're watching the podrace in Episode I. I'm telling you, it all works for 5-year-olds. JarJar, young Anakin, all of it.

1/4th of second floor done

Also, those stormtroopers are standing on a working elevator that raises when you turn a little crank.

Just a crazy old man

Old Ben Kenobi pulling a fast one, switching off the tractor beam.

Trash Compactor

Complete with tentacled monster and assorted rubbish. That red-tipped lever in the foreground closes both walls simultaneously when you pull on it.

Fully operational

Look at this cool gun. Crazy intricate, with two little bad guys to run it.

Oh, speaking of. Here's a shot of all the mini-figs that came with it. 25 in total, I think. Huge selling point for this thing. Meant to post this earlier, but I'm doing catch-up blogging, since I decided to do this three days into the project.

We're going to need more movies

There's Luke and Leia. At this point, we're about 6 hours in, I think. We've watched A New Hope, Empire and we're in the middle of Return. Screening the films was an idea that showed up at least an hour into construction.

Screening

Oh yeah, we're also screening the films while we build. Nice side benefit. Showing my son all of them in the original order.

And you can see we've reached our first reenactment possibility: Luke and Leia swinging across the bridge-less chasm, with stormtroopers blasting away.

The Mission

We're not just building this thing. I'm shooting time lapse of us building this thing. Every 5 minutes. Seems like a good interval. And I'm thinking the time lapse video will be the denouement of this here blog. We'll see. There might be a rant or two after about how quickly it got destroyed.

But that's what the time lapse video is for. And this blog. Something permanent. Because we all know Lego structures aren't.

I mean, you thought the Death Star in the movie was easy to destroy. Just a lucky shot in an exhaust vent? That's all it takes to bring down the Empire's moon-sized battle station? Hope the guy who designed that was fired, or was on-board when it went boom. Anyway, this Death Star is only held together with some Danish sicko's snapping brick mechanism.

I have a bad feeling about this

First challenge: Getting it back to Richmond, from Arkansas where Christmas happened. Had to carry it onto the plane, which earned me a lot of comments in the airport. Either people asking my son if he brought it for them, or sympathy from people who understood just what kind of construction project I was in for, or sheer jealousy from fellow Star Wars geek Dads. 

Anyway, as we were packing to come home, I had the thought that maybe I'd get rid of the box and just stash the bags of pieces in my suitcase. I opened the box, and that's when I came face to face with the 261-page, spiral-bound instruction manual, and the sheer magnitude of this thing.

You can see the book in the foreground of this shot, with the Death Star already under construction. That's no moon.

A few days ago, in a state a little bit far away…

Santa brought something amazing for my son. The Lego Death Star. The main thing on his list for Christmas this year, for months. Probably since about July, when we made our Christmas countdown calendar.

Every morning, we marked off another day. And every day, we talked about the Lego Death Star, and how many characters it came with. And how awesome it would be, if Santa brought it.

Which he did.