The weekend is almost here which means that while work emails may subside, your other bosses (your kids) will be demanding your undivided attention. Finding things to keep them occupied while maintaining your own sanity can often seem like a losing battle. That’s why we’ve come up with a few simple activities that will keep your kids entertained without breaking the bank.

Here are three ideas to help you as a parent make the most out of family time and maybe even have a little fun yourself.

Take a Hike

Luckily there are often places within 15-20 minutes of where you live that offer miles of trails and natural attractions that you’ve likely passed by many times on your daily commute.

Head over to Google and search for “Hiking trails near me”. Chances are you’ll discover dozens of destinations you’ve likely never considered. While these trails may not have high-end amenities or breathtaking views, they each offer a unique look at local foliage and wildlife.

Also consider searching for wildlife preserves, conservatories, and Audubon societies. These organizations, often supported by individuals in the community as well as national initiatives, showcase nature in the least intrusive way possible by providing access to areas that highlight your areas unique topography and wildlife, all while paying respect to its preservation for generations to come.

Batter Up!

In a nod to America’s favorite pastime, why not load up the entire crew and head to your local batting cages? Beyond letting you relive your former glory days, these family-friendly locales are geared towards every age group with speeds that range from slow to blazing. With all the equipment you’ll need, its an easy spur-of-the-moment adventure that requires nothing but your family and of course your wallet. Watch for specials and group discounts to get the most bang for your buck.

In addition, these establishments often have other activities such as mini-golf or driving ranges on site or near-by. Grab an ice-cream or hot dog at the concession stand and make a day out of it!

Scale New Heights

These man-made monuments can be found at your local gym, community center and even at specialized “Ninja” training facilities that have now become fixtures of major cities and main streets alike. Beyond rock walls, these “ninja gyms” have dozens of familiar obstacles featured on the internationally known television series, all designed with different age levels and abilities in mind.

Day passes are typically available for most of these facilities and many offer open houses for the community to come in and try out the facility free of charge. Check first to see if any local parks have rock walls to try before committing to anything too large for their first time.

Whatever you decide to do this weekend, remember your kids are getting older every day and so are you. Try to keep up with them while you can, supervise and encourage them when you can’t, and most importantly, treasure every moment because it all goes by quicker than a fastball at the batting cages.

For more suggestions check out last week’s 3 Things to Do With Your Kids.

If you’ve seen The Ridiculous Six, Jack and Jill, Grown Ups, Bulletproof, The Cobbler, Mixed Nuts, The Do-Over, or Blended – you probably think you’ve seen Adam Sandler at his worst. But don’t test the man.

Love him or hate him, Sandler is one of the biggest comedic movie stars of the past 25 years. The SNL alum has been churning out movies for the better part of 3 decades, and while not everyone is a classic, most of them have been successful. Even his latest Netflix movie, Murder Mystery, allegedly did huge numbers for the streaming service, despite the fact that even his biggest fans probably wouldn’t consider it among his best work.

The fact is, Sandler’s persona has remained largely unchanged for his entire career, even when he – and his audience – grew up, he stayed firmly ensconced in the juvenile man-child space. He was astute enough to shift towards child-friendly stuff like his Grown Ups movies and the Hotel Transylvania franchise, but his best comedic days appear to be behind him. His best dramatic days, however, may still be here.

Over the years he’s given his dramatic chops a-go in a handful of well-received movies, like Punch-Drunk Love, Spanglish, Reign O’er Me, Netflix’s The Meyerowitz Stories, and, this Oscar season, Uncut Gems.

The gritty thriller from the Safdie Brothers may be Sandler’s most intense role yet, and it’s already getting Oscar buzz. So much buzz, in fact, that Sandler is uncharacteristically making the rounds to promote the movie. And, at least half-seriously, making it clear that he would love to get nominated.

OR ELSE.

In an appearance on The Howard Stern Show on Sirius, he said that getting nominated for Uncut Gems would be “a funny big thing” and that he’d go all-out to campaign for it, i.e., he’d actually attend the ceremony in a tux, instead of a tracksuit. Then he got down to business, threatening Oscar voters, moviegoers, and Netflix subscribers everywhere with some extreme consequences should his role as an over-leveraged, gambling-addicted diamond broker go unnoticed by the Academy.

He told shock jock Stern that if he doesn’t win an Oscar, he’s “going to f—ing come back and do [a movie] that is so bad on purpose just to make you all pay. That’s how I get them.”

Given that many of us regret spending money on Mr. Deeds, back when Sandler was supposedly aspiring to make something worthwhile, the prospect of him intentionally striving to make something terrible should have us all quaking in our boots.

Or at least switching over to Disney+.

It’s hard to introduce a new element to something as rigid as the holiday season and see it really take hold. One tradition that has brought some levity to December: the ugly Christmas sweater.

The ugly sweater phenomena traces its roots to the 1980s and Bill Cosby (yikes), but it’s only within the last decade-plus that ugly Christmas sweaters have earned a prominent place on the fringes of the Holiday Party Season. The craze has resulted in an influx in specialty Christmas sweaters, but you can go too far, which is what Walmart learned when they had to apologize for their sweater featuring (checks notes)…Santa in front of a table of cocaine.

Walmart Yanks Cocaine Santa Sweaters, Apologizes for Selling Them https://t.co/0il8OsSjWB

— TMZ (@TMZ) December 9, 2019

The sweater has an excitable yet crazed Santa is shown in front of a table featuring clear lines of “snow”, along with the expression “Let It Snow”. OK, so, that couuuuld be ambiguous, right? Maybe we all just have sick minds and are jumping to conclusions. Let’s check the product description to find some redeeming counterarguments.

“The best snow comes from South America” ok welp, end of argument. If you need more, there’s this: “santa likes to savor the moment when he gets his hands on some quality, grade A snow from Colombia.” It even goes on to say “he packs it in perfect lines on his coffee table and then takes a big whiff to smell the high quality aroma of the snow.” I mean, all that’s missing is giant font spelling out “YOU KNOW THIS IS COCAINE, RIGHT???”

Walmart apologized for the sweater, and blamed it on a third party seller and that it does not represent “their values.”

Now the government of Columbia is threatening to sue Walmart.

“The Walmart sweater is an offense to the country,” said Camilo Gómez Alzate, director of Colombia’s National Agency for the Legal Defense of the State, according to the Washington Post and El Tiempo. “It generates damage to the legal products of Colombia and damage to the country’s reputation. Although Walmart apologized, the damage was done.”

The agency is asking Walmart to pay monetary damages. If Walmart fails to comply, they plan to file a lawsuit.

Either way, you’ll have to get your cocaine Santa elsewhere now (try Kohl’s).

The best part about Star Wars is that there’s something that most people can appreciate—rich character arcs, badass villains, and otherworldy droids and weapons.

But Chewbacca… Chewbacca is for everyone. Man or woman, young or old, human or otherwise – you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t love that big walking carpet. Even someone as young as 8-months-old can’t keep their cool around him, as shown by a recent viral video.

“Lil Chewie” was visiting Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Disney World Resort, Florida with his grandparents, Rachel and Eric Herrholz, when he finally met his hairy hero. Sporting his own Chewbacca apparel, the little boy was totally tickled while the famed Wookiee co-pilot playfully grunted and poked at him.

“This was Lil Chewie’s first visit with Chewbacca. We dressed him in a Chewbacca outfit, and Eric wore a Han Solo shirt,” said Rachel, regarding her Facebook video, which has since been viewed over 2 million times. “We were not expecting him to react the way he did. Chewbacca came over to get us.

“Next thing I know, I heard him laughing. I looked up and he was belly-laughing. Chewbacca was just as excited. I started to record. I was amazed and I wished his Mom and Dad were with us.”

The adorable interaction took place in the ‘Star Wars Launch Bay,’ an attraction where park-goers experience “immersive exhibits of costumes, models, concept artwork and actual movie props” as well as a meet-and-greet with Chewie himself.

“I am blessed that my grandson can make people smile and bring them happiness in this world we live in,” Rachel added.

I’m pretty sure any world with more Chewbacca in it is going to be happier, overall.

Nothing is more dad than laughing at your own jokes. Here are our 12 personal favorites from last month. (Actually as voted by you, based on Facebook engagement.)

1. 20/80 Rule

2. Adventurous Eaters

3. Morning Person

4. Change the Channel

5. Didn’t Do My Research

6. This IS Christmas Music

7. Suspect Has Been ID’d

8. Careers

9. Yelling Match

10. Origins of Cool

11. Ooops

12. Curtains

Check out last month’s top memes here.

Of all the sequels, reboots, remakes, reimaginings and updates swirling around in Hollywood, this is not one I ever expected.

Apparently a third Ace Ventura movie may be in the works.

The first Ace Ventura helped kick-off Jim Carrey’s box office dominance in the mid-90s. Along with Dumb and Dumber and The Mask, Ventura was a huge hit, launching the Living Color comic into the stratosphere, from which he wouldn’t completely come down until he shifted to more serious, sentimental fare. (Remember The Majestic? Me neither.)

Now, on the heels of what looks like a scenery-chewing performance in the forthcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie, Carrey may be returning to one of his most iconic roles. He’s already played Ace twice, butt (pun intended) the second one didn’t go so well. He’s also no stranger to returning to characters after a long time off, as evidenced by the ill-fated Dumb and Dumber sequel he starred in a few years back.

Whether this actually happens is yet to be seen, as the Twitter frenzy around it was kicked off by a cryptic, detail-free tweet from an CNBC writer.

Ace Ventura 3?! 🤔 pic.twitter.com/wEfz9VEgV9

— Daniel Richtman (@DanielRPK) December 9, 2019

The punctuation and emoji in the tweet seem to suggest that even as he puts the rumor out there, he doesn’t necessarily believe it. Of course, there is little need for facts on social media, and the rumor was quickly up and running, with Ace Ventura’s production studio adding fuel to the fire with a tweet of their own:

👀 #AceVentura3 https://t.co/ygqtDlQO4I

— Morgan Creek (@Morgan__Creek) December 7, 2019

Again, side-eye is far from a definitive statement. Side-eye emojis don’t usually have greenlighting power. And just last year, Tommy Davidson, a friend and former co-star of Carrey’s, told US Weekly that the actor is not interested.

“[Carrey] doesn’t want to do it now. But Jim is one of those kind of artists that, you know, he does what he feels, he does what he believes in. I asked him about it. I told him, ‘Hey man, it’d be nice in Jamaica.’ He said, ‘No I’m not doing those now,” Davidson said.

So we’ll see. But based on the social media response, even if Jim Carrey’s not ready for Ace Ventura 3, his fans are.

THIS IS THE BEST NEWS EVER!!

— Zak Frost (@Zakvlogz) December 7, 2019

“My fiancé, Nicholas, is 10 years younger than me but has exceeded my expectations of being a father since the day our daughter was born.

I was waiting so long to be with someone that I would be happy raising a child with. Neither one of us is perfect and we’re figuring things out as we go but he’s been the backbone of our family.

He works 60+ hours a week to provide for us. He has never complained about cooking dinner on my bad days and even cleans too. He is hands-on when it comes to raising our daughter. He respects my role as a stay-at-home mom and I want him to know how much I appreciate everything he does for our family. Because I know he does more than I ever expected. Without complaint.

Happy birthday, Nicholas! We love you more than you know and appreciate more than we can show.

Thank you for everything you do and all of the adventures.”

– Lisa Ishihara

Want to share a story about fatherhood? Email [email protected]

Check out the previous editions of Father Figures here.

A major part of being a parent is making sure your kids appreciate the things you loved growing up. Few things hurt more than your kid yawning during an iconic moment in Star Wars or asking to play Minecraft when you’re teaching them how to use the warp tubes in Super Mario Bros.

Fortunately, Back to the Future superfan James Napier has never had a problem getting his kids to share in his excitement for his favorite movie franchise, in no small part due to his DeLorean, which has been immaculately restored to resemble Doc’s time machine from the 1985 classic.

“I take it out on weekends and I drop my kids off at school or football sometimes. They like it and their friends find it quite amusing!” says Napier. “You see other people’s jaws drop when we drive past. The family adores it—although my wife Emma probably doesn’t want to know how much it has cost me in total to restore!

“We drive it everywhere we go—you’ve got to make the most of it.”

Folks in the area can’t seem to get enough of the stainless steel coupe, especially since there’s reportedly only one other like it in the U.K. Napier’s youngest daughter, Daisy, says she loves when people honk their horn as they drive past.

“It’s really cool. Dad is probably a bit crazy to build something like that!” the 8-year-old reports.

It took time, money, and a lot of elbow grease to get the vehicle to the pristine condition it’s in today. When Napier bought it for £55,000, someone had already tried to convert it into the iconic time machine but with really shoddy workmanship.

“It was quite run down. It needed a lot of work,” says Napier. “Somebody had tried to make it into a Back to the Future car—but it was really quite bad! The car was an absolute mess. I was completely nuts.

“I thought maybe I could salvage some of it, but in the end, I needed to get rid of everything and start from scratch,” he added. “I probably spent around 1,200 hours working on the car and it was quite expensive to do. It was a seven days a week job.

“It might have took a while, but it’s definitely worth it.”

He says the project cost approximately £80,000 from start to finish.

Now, Napier drives the art piece in charity events around the U.K. and is always happy to indulge people who want a photo op. He even added all the bells and whistles to give it the same flair as the DeLorean from the films.

“In the film, you see white plumes of smoke and that’s done by fire extinguishers in the film,” he continued. “We’ve done something similar—we’ve used CO2 fire extinguishers with a remote control.

“We have a smoke machine inside the car too so when you open the doors smoke comes out so it’s like you’ve traveled in time. A lot of the props inside makes the exact same noises. We’ve got the iconic car doors and lights too.”

It’s been a long road to get Napier’s DeLorean up and running to such exact specifications, but with the machine they have now, they don’t need roads.

From Van Wilder to Deadpool to Pikachu, there’s no role to which Ryan Reynolds can’t adapt. Parenthood is no exception. His Twitter is a goldmine of fatherly wisdom, and we’ve collected his 15 funniest dad tweets to prove it.

He reads to his kid.

No matter which kids book I read to my screaming baby on an airplane, the moral of the story is always something about a vasectomy.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) August 7, 2016

He keeps her in check.

The mobile above my daughter’s crib is just a whole bunch of NuvaRings. So she remembers how lucky she is.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) October 20, 2016

He listens.

I can‘t tell if my daughter’s smashing plates all over the kitchen floor or singing the theme song to Paw Patrol.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) December 27, 2018

He makes sacrifices.

Happy birthday to my baby girl! Sad I lost my virginity. But thankful I have a daughter.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) December 16, 2015

He’s a teacher.

I’m teaching my daughter that the sun goes down each night because it’s mad at her. Probably gonna write a book on parenting at some point.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) June 5, 2015

He demonstrates trust.

Totally caved and tossed my daughter the keys to the car. She looked really happy as they bounced off her tiny infant face.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) June 12, 2016

He’s a great storyteller.

Went to Disneyland because my daughter’s obsessed with Mickey Mouse. She was so excited when I got home and told her.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) January 30, 2017

He has an answer for everything.

On our 6am walk, my daughter asked where the moon goes each morning. I let her know it’s in heaven, visiting daddy’s freedom.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) October 16, 2016

He rolls with the punches.

My daughter just sneezed into my yawning mouth. Seemed really fucking pleased with herself. Joke’s on her. She’ll have to bury me someday.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) April 16, 2016

He is selfless.

I watched Frozen without my two year old this morning. Despair reveals itself in many forms.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) November 9, 2016

He remembers the little things.

My daughter loves being buried up to her neck in sand at the beach. Her little face lights up when I come back to get her the next day.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) July 16, 2017

He’s honest.

Being a father is the single greatest feeling on earth. Not including those wonderful years I spent without a child, of course.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) July 22, 2016

He’s heroic.

Being a Dad isn’t just about eating a huge bag of gummy-bears as your wife gives birth. It means being comfortable with the word hero.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) June 18, 2017

He’s encouraging.

If my daughter proves she can take care of the Fire Ants I got her, we’ll get her the damn kitten.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) June 3, 2018

He’s… well. He’s Ryan Reynolds.

Being a father means responsibility. Not just for your main family, but also the secret one in Denmark nobody knows about.

— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) June 19, 2016

Here’s a story you may have missed in the post-Thanksgiving – pre-holiday season shuffle.

When Shantel Carrillo first shared an ultrasound of her then 20-week-old baby girl, she had failed to notice a stunning detail. She and her partner, Bryce, were so focused on the baby’s face that they really didn’t notice anything else in the printout. Thankfully, a friend on social media immediately pointed out the odd appearance of a figure appearing to kiss her soon-to-be-born child.

“I posted the ultrasound,” Carrillo shared with NBC’s San Diego affiliate, “and right when I posted it, like 30 seconds later, someone’s like, ‘There’s an angel kissing your baby!’”

For Carrillo, who recently lost her father, it was no abnormality.

She posted the ultrasound side-by-side with a picture of her late father holding her oldest daughter when she was born. Even if you don’t believe in all that angels stuff, you’ve gotta admit that this is pretty freaking crazy either way.

“It could very well be him – you never know,” she told NBC 7. “It’s so his character; that’s just so my dad.”

The post, of course, has spread, as things posted to Reddit have the tendency of doing. Plenty of folks agreeing with the original poster, with others claiming it’s just the angle of the photo. As for Carrillo, she’s happy either way.

“It does look a lot like my dad and it’s awesome. And, you know, it could be him, just saying, ‘Hey, I’m here, and it’s all good,’” Carrillo said. “Or it could be that the placenta just looks like my dad, which is awesome, too.”

Whatever or whomever it may be in the photo, it has certainly given the expecting mother a treasured memory that she’ll have to share for years to come.

“It’s just a cool picture to have; it just is what it is,” she said.

If nothing else, she now has an amazing name for a new metal band.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dad Shaped Placenta.”