We managed several activities with the kids this weekend, which made time flow quite nicely. 

First, The Daddy found a Victorian recipe for gingerbread requiring about sixty steps and six hundred different ingredients, and we spent hours and hours as a family making gingerbread men and icing them. Then finally, on Sunday afternoon, we managed to finish construction of the piece de resistance - the Gingerbread Shack: 

Can you tell somebody was getting a little fed up by this point?

That poor gingerbread man tried hard to get into the shack, but as it was so awfully small and we had neglected to provide a door, so he settled for standing outside smiling inanely. 

On Sunday morning we took a trip to Target for a cheap 4 man tent, which proved only moderately easy to set up. Totally worth it though, even if we are going to have to take it up and down to save the grass, because it immediately became Base Camp Alpha and we hardly heard a peep out of them all afternoon. To clarify - they were making plenty of noise but we just didn’t need to be there to hear it. 

And of course, the recurring theme of the weekend continued to be this: 

Except it !popped! somewhere around Tuesday evening, so we are now using it in conjunction with this: 

And you know what? The fun just tripled!