Family Time Fun

Last night, my girl Huckdoll challenged us to "shut off your computers and TVs for one hour and do something".  The idea was to power down from 9-10 EST.  Being the non-conformist I am, I asked if doing it from 8-9 EST would be okay.  The main reason for wanting to do it at a different time was K.  My plan was for us to build the massive fort that came in Monday's mail.  K goes to bed between 9-9:30 and she would miss some of the fun (trust me people, she has to go to bed then or she's a total bear in the AM.  No matter what we're doing, it's gotta be over by 9).  I didn't want her to miss it, so I altered the time to fit our family.  :)  Huckdoll said she was cool with it, so away we went!

Now since we weren't doing anything X-rated, I wanted to provide photo proof that we were all together having fun as a family.  Enjoy the following pictures (with some commentary) showing our fun!

First off, I was wrong.  It wasn't bigger than K.  It sure looked like it was, but I was just a little off:

Ya know if she didn't have feet, it would be taller than her. Just sayin'. :)

Anyway.

The set is wicked easy to handle and assemble.  It's all magnetized and K was able to put the wall "studs" in place.  The instructions are easy to follow and provides 6-7 different ideas for construction (for those of us creatively challenged).  We started with the basic fort shape and moved on from there.  Here's the first fort we assembled:

Here are some shots from when the fort was occupied:

If you look closely at the above picture, you can see the 16 yr old peering through the porthole in the back. :)

We had to deconstruct the first fort in order to assemble the super ship when this happened:

So not only are they great fort building walls, they make great light sabers too!  DISCLAIMER:  That is NOT what the foam tubes are made for.  There are hard plastic pieces at each end of the tubes that house the magnets.  Those hard plastic pieces do hurt when they come in contact with body parts (as Mr. Smoochiefrog and M can attest to).  Please don't try this at home!

Once the carnage was cleared from the room, building once again commenced.  Here's the completed super ship with it's crew and rowing wench:

They look too happy to be pirates though.  :)

The best part about this toy is this:

It all stores nicely in it's own little carry bag!  It could easily be taken on a family trip for hours of fun for the munchkins.  B was upset that we didn't leave it up all night, but I told him we'd build again tonight.  We had a lot of fun and enjoyed our time together. 

Thanks to education.com for the great product and Huckdoll for suggesting powering down!

Comments

[Tara R.]

Cool fort... much better than sofa cushions and blankets. :D Glad you took the challenge too. Looks like you and yours had great fun.

[Huckdoll]

Awesome, Smoochiefrog!! Looks like you guys had a blast during power down...exactly what I was hoping for.

It was amazing to know that fellow bloggers around the world were disconnecting with me :)

Thanks for posting, too!!

[Mrs Furious]

We have this and LOVE it. So fun, So easy. It definitely made it into the "move" pile of toys and not the "donate" pile!