Marbles are Not for Eating....

I saw this marble run at a used furniture store in North Carolina and thought the $20 price tag was a little steep.  Lucky for us, Grandma Reintjes in her infinite wisdom knew better!  Who doesn't love marbles?  Who doesn't love to watch marbles roll down a track at top speeds?  Who doesn't love that clicking noise they make as they bang into each other?  Not my boys, that's for sure!  I don't know what I was thinking, trying to leave the store without this thing!  After all it meets all of my dream toy criteria--it's made of wood, it's simple, and it doesn't beep, blink, whistle or make cat noises at me (oh you kitty keyboard how I despise your incessant meowing)!

This is David's favorite toy right now and the first thing I hear once Henry lays down for his morning nap is David asking to play marbles.  And the fun doesn't stop with just the marble run :)  David likes to sort the different colored marbles in muffin tins (I promise all I did was give him the muffin tin and he decided to color sort!).  This easily keeps him busy for an hour which is no small feat!  While he was occupied here I was able to get ready, clean the kitchen and the bathroom!

Of course like pretty much every activity we do, it always seems to end up as a wild game of "avalanche"....oh well.......

Henry loves the marble run too, and it is really cute to watch him focus all of his attention on getting the marbles into the top of the track and then stopping them halfway down.  Of course he requires a tad more supervision than David.......

If he would just stop trying to eat the marbles he might be able to play longer than fifteen minutes without losing his marble privileges......