Amy Jennings and Llewe Jones know they won’t have a dedicated Lego room forever – they’re making the most of this time because it won’t be long before their son Leon wants his room back!
The Lower Hutt couple used to store their bricks in their bedroom, but their hobby has forced them to rethink and they have created their own brick pit in Leon’s room.
“Originally the Lego was in our bedroom and it was getting a bit overwhelming,” tells data analyst Amy. “It wasn’t like we forced him out of his bedroom. Thankfully, Leon wasn’t really sleeping in there. It was nice that that our son wants to share a room with his sister.”
Lego is a new-found shared hobby for the couple, both 40, after Amy’s stash was brought out of her childhood wardrobe. It also reignited Llewe’s love for Lego and has since become a pastime they can spend hours on, when not looking after Holly, eight, and Leon, five.
However, their love of bricks meant being away from the children for an extended period for the first time, as they flew to Auckland to film Lego Masters NZ. Llewe and Amy would phone home, where her mother Megan Jennings was looking after the children, only to discover the kids weren’t really missing them.
Kids Leon and Holly like getting in on the builds.
“Sometimes they weren’t all that interested,” laughs Amy. “Knowing my mum was looking after them meant we could totally concentrate on the show while we were up there. We couldn’t have done Lego Masters without her support and our workplaces being so good too.”
Amy admits she felt a bit of imposter syndrome filming the show, but that was eased by the generosity of the other competitors.
“I was thinking, ‘I don’t know how to build. I have no idea.’ The key thing I said when we signed up was, ‘We can never split up over this – it’s just Lego. We’re here to have fun, right?'”
Library photographer Llewe loved being on the show but is happy to get back to basics building with the children while they’re still happy to play with their parents.
“They are interested to see what we’re doing,” he says. “But we expect they’ll probably get sick of it at some point.”
Holly loves to create mosaics and patterns, and recently made a fairground and a jailhouse complete with a spider-infested toilet, while Leon is creative, constructing spaceships and buildings. But at five, he also loves destroying everything!
While Lego Masters was Llewe’s first filmed project, it’s not his last – he is soon due to appear in a documentary on digitising the work of Joseph Divis, a West Coast photographer from the goldmining era.
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