Dear Robotime family,
After our Mother’s Day and Father’s Day r2 activity came to an end, I sat with your stories and read them one by one.
At first, I thought I would be reading about crafting. What you made, who you made it with, which kit reminded you of someone you love.
But the more I read, the more I realized these were not only stories about finished projects. They were stories about people.
These may look like small moments from the outside. But small moments are often where love stays.
So this time, I do not want to simply announce the winners and move on.
I want to write these stories down and keep them safe.
Because they are not just comments in an activity thread. They are pieces of your lives, and they deserve to be remembered with care.
@Kerin_Thorne, I want to keep the story of your grandad and his typewriter.
Before you could even read, you would sit beside him and press the keys. The letters did not make sense yet, and the keys would get caught. But when you were done, he would pull out the paper and read your “story” back to you.
A child pressed random letters onto a page. A grandad chose to read them as a story. That is something worth keeping.
@ThaoNguyen , I want to keep the soft yellow light from your fourth-grade evenings.
You brought craft assignments home not because of the grade, but because it meant you could sit beside your father again. Bamboo sticks, red cellophane, scissors, paper flowers, small rafts, and a Mid-Autumn lantern slowly took shape on your study table.
Years later, when you build something with your hands, those evenings still return.
Maybe what stays is not only the lantern. Maybe it is the feeling of sitting beside your father while he gently showed you how to hold the paper just right.
@TheLibrarian , I want to keep that quiet afternoon with your father.
He belongs to engineering, circuits, and systems. You belong to words, novels, and imagined worlds. But one Father’s Day, the two of you spent hours building a complicated train model together.
For much of the time, you were not talking.
You were together.
And now, sometimes, he waxes the gears while he is on team calls.
A project can sit beside an office desk and still carry an afternoon inside it.
@Ladyoflarkspur , I want to keep the ceramics in your family.
You and your mother made many things together, but ceramics was your greatest love. Your daughter learned it too, and now she teaches ceramics herself.
From your mother’s hands, to yours, to your daughter’s.
Some family stories are kept in clay.
@Tricia12 , I want to keep your grandpa’s old clock.
You grew up without a father figure, and your grandparents and uncles helped raise you. You followed your grandpa while he did carpentry work. He was a farmer, a carpenter, and a crafter. Many of his works were lost, but you saved what you could.
When you saw the ROKR Cuckoo Clock, you cried because it reminded you of the vintage clock he once had on the wall.
Now your Cuckoo Clock sits proudly in your living room.
A new clock became a way to feel close to him again.
@KatH , I want to keep both scenes from your story: your father making delicate fishing flies when you were little, and your daughter sitting beside you with a Disney puzzle, squealing with joy when a piece finally fit.
You lost your father when you were eight, so you do not have many memories of him.
But you kept that one.
And now another child is sitting beside you.
@Natasha_Stanley , I want to keep your mother’s words: “Let’s make something.”
When you were upset, excited, or could not find the words, your mum sat with you at the table and made something with you.
She gave your feelings somewhere to go.
And when you wrote about the carousel at the zoo, holding her hand, choosing a horse, and watching her wave from the side, it was easy to understand why the ROKR Carousel means so much to you.
It is not just a craft. It is a memory you can hold in your hands.
@Kim_Kieffer , I want to keep your family’s miniature gingerbread houses.
Nearly twenty years of frosting, candy, tiny walls, old cookie cutters, children, and now grandchildren around the table.
A tradition does not always begin by calling itself a tradition.
Sometimes it is simply something a family does again and again, until it becomes part of who they are.
@Pola , I want to keep your Golden Sunflower.
Your sons love video games, animation, and drawing. Crafting is what brings you joy. So your family found a quiet agreement: you support what they love, and they support what makes you happy.
When your husband and sons built their first kit together and gave it to you for Mother’s Day, the flower carried more than petals.
It carried the time they sat down for you.
@Hunter_Alexander , I want to keep the Cuckoo Clock you built with your mother.
After your father left early, your mother spent time with you through puzzles and board games. Later, you discovered Robotime together.
This year, after serious medical issues and surgery, she made it through. You surprised her with the Cuckoo Clock, and you loved every second of building it together.
Every time you see that clock, it reminds you how much she means to you.
@emriggs , I want to keep the kitchen table from fifty years ago.
Your mother made cutout cookies in different shapes, spread colorful icing and candy across the table, and let you create your own designs.
Today, you have your own cookie company.
When you customized the Rolife bakery with your own name, it became a tiny version of a dream that started all those years ago.
@Dogdoc , I want to keep that Thanksgiving.
Your three adult sons came home with their families, and you brought out the ROKR Pinball Machine that had been waiting for two years. You built it together, and afterward, children both young and grown played with it for hours.
You saw your sons building together again, the way they used to decades before.
Some afternoons bring a little piece of the old home back.
@Mark_Rudnik , I want to keep the time your father spent building model cars, planes, and ships with you.
While you built, he asked about your life.
Now you build wooden models with your own son.
You wrote that it is the only time you can pull him away from a screen and connect.
Sometimes a model is the doorway a parent has been looking for.
@Suzanne_Jones , I want to keep the dresses and quilts.
Your mother made dresses for you, and matching dresses for your dolls, Jeannie and Lisa. Later, you made quilts for your children and grandchildren.
I also want to keep the quilt your daughter’s puppy chewed a hole in, and the patch you plan to embroider in memory of the pup who crossed the rainbow bridge too soon.
Sometimes we mend things so the story can stay.
@Smith42 , I want to keep your mother’s kitchen table.
As a child, there was always a project on it. Finger painting and paper crafts when you were young, scrapbooking as you got older, and now book nooks and miniatures.
After 47 years, when you go to your mother’s house, there is still something being made there.
A kitchen table can hold more than projects.
It can hold years.
@Sarah_Hudson1 , I want to keep the afternoons with your grandad.
You shared honestly that your relationship with your mum and dad was not easy. After you moved in with your grandad, the two of you found a hobby you could share.
You still build together today.
The miniature kitchen reminds you of those afternoons because it looks close to your grandad’s kitchen.
Sometimes a person finds home in a place they did not expect.
@Shannenenenenen’s family canvas, with everyone’s artwork on it, even the pets’ paw prints.
@Sasa’s mother, who lost her husband and still filled her child’s days with free city activities, painting contests, and time together.
@Zoe_Lau’s parents, one a chef and one a baker, letting her try things in the kitchen, then helping clean up afterward.
@Jo_Zanella and her mum at a mosaic class, grout everywhere, laughing through the mess.
@Yvonnemtw’s family building the Eiffel Tower together, waiting for the lights to come on.
@samca’s Mother’s Day tea table, where sandwiches, desserts, tea cups, and flowers made a real afternoon feel like the Rolife Leisure Time Tea Room had quietly come to life.
These moments may not all be on the winner list.
But they belong here too.
Because so much of family is made of things like this: a table, a little mess, someone nearby, and the feeling that this ordinary day might stay with us longer than we know.
Why We Created This Activity 
Of course, we wanted to celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Of course, we wanted to share gifts with this community.
But more than that, we wanted to give these stories a place to be seen, written down, and kept.
Thank you for trusting us with these pieces of your lives.
We will write them down and keep them .
Congratulations to all the winners. 
And thank you to every single person who took part in this activity.
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are a month apart, but many of us are mothers and fathers every single day.
— Robotime team
