We’ve been married for 16 years, we have three children who are now teenagers. We’re now going to career expos. It’s a whole different life, honestly!

I didn’t have LEGO growing up. I remember my grandparents had LEGO, I do remember going to their house and we’d have a ball all the time with it. It’s actually Jason who got me into LEGO. It wasn’t until we’d been married for seven years, I actually built something myself. I purchased a whole lot of bricks, about 20,000 of them that were intended for a play box for the children. But they never got to play with them, because I built a replica of our house.

In 2014 I launched our business House of Bricks. I was working in early childhood at the time and a lot of the principles behind early childhood is the idea of learning through play. Being creative, and playing with toys like LEGO teaches children skills, which will build them up to be great learners and excellent adults as well.

Our son was a real inspiration for it as well. Ryan, he really struggled at school. So when it came to maths, I used LEGO bricks and he just connected with it. And I was like, How can I inspire more children? That’s what we want to do and just, you know, connect with those children who aren’t academics, but are very creative and LEGO might be their outlet.

The amount of team building and community events that we’re putting on at the moment is just huge because everyone just wants to connect back together.

When I started House of Bricks I knew that part of what we did had to be about giving back to the community. So, using the resources we have on hand every year since 2014 we have hosted a Christmas themed Bricksibition – we get together with other keen builders and make exciting LEGO-themed displays with a Christmas spin on them. This year our main display is a 10-meter-long custom street front all made from LEGO.

We still go ice skating – we go to Tekapo every year with the kids – we always skate there at least once.”

– Rachel