BenSpark Family Adventures

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00670 Halloween was a bit different this year. We did not get dressed up or go trick or treating. I have to work a 13 hour shift tonight because of the time change and since I run the switchboard on Saturdays I could not take time off. Also, it snowed and was super cold around here. So, instead we watched Nightmare Before Christmas and had take out from 5 Guys. The kids and Allison went and picked out pumpkins to carve and they also got candy to make up little bags for friend. Somehow we still have all that candy. This morning I went off to Honey Dew and picked up some of their Halloween themed donuts. I really liked how they make a spider using the dew drop (Honey Dew’s name for munchkins). There was a second Mummy donut, I got one for Andy last week. The kids had a good time despite no trick or treating.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00669 We woke up to a nasty trick from Mother Nature. Snow, 3 inches of wet heavy snow today. Actually when I woke up it was sleeting and then I went upstairs and worked in the office. When I got out and went downstairs I was so surprised to see the yard covered in snow. It did give me a chance to break in my new snow boots from Xero Shoes. I got their new style called the Alpine. Very comfortable. We had quite a few things happening today. I had received a mailer from WB Home Entertainment for the movie BeetleJuice which was released on 4K Blu-ray. I was also doing a twitter party or tweet along with Jodie Sweetin from Full House. Eva had two friends over to watch the movie and so I watched the movie and tweeted while Eva and her two friends watched the movie. Andy was a bit freaked out by the movie so he wanted to watch something funny in our bed. He did come down for the Day-O scene. Wile this was going on Allison spent the time hanging with one of moms. The T...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00668 Tonight we went over to my sister, Shelby’s house for a birthday party for Eva and Kylie. First time in a while when the whole family was together in one place. Tara and Erik were up from Kentucky and Tim was there. The theme was running cheetah, which is something that Kylie likes. She is a big fan of cheetahs. Shelby had made a cute little cake in the shape of a cheetah face and some orange cupcakes. That way they could still blow out candles. Earlier in the day we went to my parent’s former house where I had to get some bins out of the attic. In all I had 16 giant plastic bins full of Transformers. I had put them up there in 2007 or 2008 with the help of Erik. He did not think that he’s have to be there to help take them back down. So now there are 6 of them back home with me and 10 of them in the garage so that I can take a couple home at a time (large bins, foot locker sized). The next thing to do is to figure out what is in each and see f I can sell t...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00667 With both kids in karate at the same time they each have to get creative with what they do while waiting for their class to start. Eva is usually all set with her book and she does not need any entertainment. Andy is usually pretty antsy while we wait for his class to begin or wait for Eva’s class to be over. This week and last we went two days in a row and that works out pretty well. Andy has decided to bring a few things with him including a draw your own comic book. It is from Dogman creator David Pilkey. We got one of these from our zoom call with Max Brallier when he was promoting his latest The Last Kids on Earth book with Jeff Kinney at An Unlikely Story. So, Andy has started making his own comic and it is pretty good. He’s having fun with it and it keeps him entertained, so that is a win all around.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00666 That title is very tongue in cheek. While I did end up winning two of the gift baskets from the raffle at ABD the contents of said baskets are not, in fact, for me. One basket is filled with Dunkin Donuts related promotional items including some special Dunkin flavored beers. I no longer drink any beer. I also prefer Honey Dew over Dunkin any day. So, that basket is for Allison. The other basket had 4 bottles of wine and for wine glasses. Also for Allison. I think the only thing I get to keep out of both baskets is a Dunkin Donuts Pez dispenser, and that is after Andy eats the Pez.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00665 I received some free BendyFigs from The Noble Collection to play with and review. Opinions are my own.This past week I attended the Holiday of Play and I met with the folks at the Noble Collection They sent me The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Bride of Frankenstein figures to check out. I did get to see how these figures bend and move and can be posed various ways in our Zoom session. There is really good details to these figures. They come with stands and so you can pose them in many position. When I was a kid there was this thing called Creature Double Feature and The Creature from the Black Lagoon was often one of the features and it freaked me out so bad. He doesn’t seem to care me that much anymore. Thank goodness. These are fun collectibles and if you have a monster fan in your life or you are looking for some great Halloween scares then these BendyFigs are for you. More info below. BendyFigs by The Noble Collection BendyFigs are a BRAND NEW Toyl...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00664 The kids were talking about Oktoberfest and so I looked for pretzels because for Oktoberfest that is probably the only thing that they could enjoy other than sausages. I found Eastern Standard Pretzels and they are out of Boston. So, I ordered a gift box that had all sorts of soft pretzels inside. We’ve been enjoying them along with different specialty salts. One is a Chili Lime salt and it is rather tasty. They even have specialty sugars like a raspberry lime. I like to add both to my pretzels. I think that once the pretzels run out these salts and sugars will be good for rimming margarita glasses.

  Ravensburger sent us the new Harry Potter STR!KE Dice Game for free to play with and review. Opinions are our own. This is a rather fun dice game that plays on the different spells that are commonly cast in the world of Harry Potter. Each spell cast does a different thing in the game. For example if you cast Wingardium Leviosa then you have to stack up the dice in the arena as if they have levitated into that stack. Each player or wizard takes turns rolling their dice into the arena. After each roll they check to see if a spell has been cast and act accordingly. Sometimes everyone has to roll at once and sometimes you have to roll all of your dice at the same time. The game is perfect for a family of 4-5 as that is the maximum amount of players that can play the game. It goes by at a fast clip and lasts about 15 minutes or less. So this is something that can easily be brought out before or after dinner and played quickly. It is a fun game for any Harry Potter fan on your holiday ...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00663 Andy has been making use of the Mixy Squish that we received from The Horizon Group. This air dry compound is really neat and Andy has made a few fun things. He had made a fish and now he has made the taco. The compound stays solid once dry but it also stays a little squishy, too. It is really interesting stuff. I took Andy to karate for a special bully prevention session. The school always does an excellent job with teaching kids the skills needed to deal with bullies. This afternoon Andy also received a postcard from one of the black belt volunteers at the school and it really hit him. You should have seen the smile on his face.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00662 For special donut Friday I picked up some Halloween donuts that looked like mummies. Andy loved it! I’ve been being a lot better about the extras but I went for a donut myself. It was a big day for getting things done. I got a new blower/vacuum for leaves. I got the back yard cleaned up so that we could have a backyard movie night for Andy and he friend Bella. He was so excited to be able to have a friend over. We watched Hocus Pocus and it wasn’t until bedtime that we found out that Andy did not want to watch that movie. He watched it, though and got through the night. We talked to him and asked him to make sure that he tells us what he would rather watch next time around.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00661 Nintendo sent us a free copy of NBA 2K21 to play with and review. Opinions are my own. It is probably no secret that I’m not a big sports guy. I don’t really have any favorite teams or favorite sports. The reason I agreed to check out the new NBA 2K21 was that I thought it would be a fun game to play with Andy and I could use a dream team of players from when I was interested in basketball, which was the 1980s. NBA 2K21 has an 80’s all star team and I was able to play guys like Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Kevin McHale and Moses Malone against the current players. I couldn’t even tell you any of their names other than Lebron James. However, I knew I wanted to be able to play a game with Andy. I was not prepared for how competitive he was while playing. Other than watching Eva play basketball last year we’ve had no other real exposure to the game and that is why I was so surprised at how much Andy got into playing. I mean, he got really competitive. In our fi...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00660 The fine folks at Playmobil sent me the Scooby-Doo! Adventure in the Mystery Mansion for free to play with and review. All opinions in the review are my own and honest. I was a big fan of Scooby-Doo when I was growing up and I am glad that Scooby and the gang are seeing an uptick in interest from kids all over. Playmobil has done some great things with the Scooby-Doo brand. They came out with the Mystery machine first as well as some blind bag packaged ghosts from the show. These are really well done. Also well done was the Mystery Mansion This ting has everything that you need for having some fun play with the Scooby gang. that is everything except for Shaggy and Velma. I honestly think they should have been included in the set. There does not appear to be one set where you have the whole gang together. The best way to get the entire gang would be to get the Mystery Machine with Fred Daphne and Velma and the set with Scooby Doo, shaggy and a ghost. That wo...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00659 About a month ago we participated in a special night with the Kentucky Humane Society. They had an online auction and we won this Margarita mix set along with a Google Nest Mini. I donated the Google Nest Mini to America’s Best Defense for their Pink Power Event to raise money for Breast Cancer. We have a bunch of these in the house but I really want to get the ones that are combination of wifi and a google mini. That would work best to increase the size and strength of the mesh around the house. I guess that we will have to have some Margarita’s soon. Not pictures is the Google Nest Mini and two really nice Margarita glasses. For only having one drink a year we certainly have a ton of Margarita stuff.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00658 Occasionally I open the freezer and find strange things. Mostly they are decades old frozen bananas but sometimes there could be a surprise. Andy has decided that he wanted to make a peanut butter crackle. This is something that he came up with and experiment that he is convinced will allow him to crack the peanut butter on the plate and eat it in chunks. It might just do that, but otherwise it is something quite cute. Andy likes to just do stuff with no instructions just to see the outcome. He’s got an inventor’s mind that one.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00657 Eva’s room has been painted and now it is time for the decorating. She asked for lights around her ceiling. I had some LED strip lights that I thought would work but they ended up being a disaster. So we tore those down and touched up the paint and then hung up these rope lights. I used the real 3M command strips and mini hooks so that we could put the lights across the entire room. These Rope lights are great. We’ve now put them in my office, Andy’s room and now Eva’s room. If we ever replace our fence I am thinking about installing some outside, too. Great ambient lighting for outdoor movie nights.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00656 Nintendo often sends me some of the latest games to try out and review. They sent me a free copy of NBA 2K21 for free along with some Nintendo gear. We’ll be doing an in depth post all about the game soon but for now I wanted to post up the cool gear that was sent. Eva immediately went for the Mario hat. I had to wrestle it away from her just to take the photo. The water bottle is sweet, too. I’ll have to start taking that with me to me Krav class. I’ve needed a new water bottle for that very reason. And of course the Legend of Zelda socks. Those rock! I’m pretty excited to play NBA 2K21 because I’ve wanted to play a game for the whole family that was a sports game that none of us has played before. So it is a level playing field.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00655 Occasionally I receive boxes of new products or returning products from General Mills Cereal. They sent me a sweet box of items returning to shelves for the upcoming Halloween Holiday. We have Reese’s Puffs Bats and Boo Berry Cereal and some Fruit Roll-Ups themed after Boo Berry and Franken Berry. There was also a Count Chocula Cereal bar. I’m a fn of all of them and am very appreciative to General Mills Cereal for sending me free samples from time to time. I totally ate both fruit roll-ups and the cereal bar before the kids even thought of snagging them from me.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00654 The fine folks at Funko sent me a free gift box of some great Funko items including a Christmas Mickey Mouse, a Gamerverse Hulk from the Avengers video game. Also included was a Pop Socket with a Pop Superman and a deck of the Something Wild card game (not pictured). This was a really nice surprise and I know that my contact at Funko remembered that Andy loves The Hulk!

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00653 We received two Snap Ships from PlayMonster for free to play with and review. Opinions are our own.When I was at Toy Fair this past February, which seems like a lifetime ago, I was able to see Snap Ships and I was very excited because this was a whole new building toy with a storyline, cartoon and app. So many ways to interact with Snap Ships and I could not wait till they arrived. Well, they arrived back in June and things got crazy so it took me a while to really get in there and do an in depth review. I finally did one today. There are a bunch of different Snap Ships to collect. Many on both sides of the battle. The good guys are The Forge and after watching all the episodes of Snap Ships season 1 on YouTube I learned more about the different characters from The Forge. I’m glad that I got the pilot, Klik to be part of my collection. He flies the Sabre XF-23 Interceptor. Actually he flies about anything. In the show the pilots fly all sorts of Snap Ships ...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00652 I’m gonna be honest. I did not get a photo today until real late and went with a photo of one of my Skylanders, Halloween Eye Brawl. I’m sure it has a different name but it was a Halloween themed character from the series.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00651 We received a couple of free YOU*niverse sets from The Horizon Group to play with and review. Opinions are our own. The 3D Crystal Growing Unicorn was a fun STEM project for Eva to do. She and Allison set the unicorn up and ready to grow crystals. The instructions were easy and other than boiling the water she could do all of the project on her own. Once it was done growing crystals she went and painted the Unicorn and it came out really cool.

We received the watercolor blends + ink set from Bright Stripes for free to use and review. Opinions are our own. Art is very important in our house. Maybe not so much the display of art but the creation of art. Both Eva and Andy are good artists. Eva had her birthday the other day and over half of the gifts she received were art supply related. So when I was given the chance to check out one of the iHeartArt sets from Bright Stripes I had Eva look at the choices and decide which she would like to try out. She choose the watercolor blends + ink set which included 10 fine line pens, 8 watercolor pastels, a water brush pen, 25-page art pad and a Techniques Guide. The technique guides are invaluable parts of these sets. Kids love experimenting and the guides give them some great instruction on trying out things they might not have thought of doing. When the set arrived Eva got right to work on a little project that she was doing for school. Each year the kids make a piece of art through S...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00650 For Eva’s newly painted room we are adding some rope lights around the top of the walls. I am hoping that this is long enough to go around the entire room. We will see. I had used some other lights but they did not work out right and we took them down. Have to do some paint touch up and then install these, I think that they will work much better.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00649 It does not seem possible that time has passed so much that I now have a teenager living in this house. Weren’t you just born? Weren’t we watching Mary Poppins for the 50th time just the other day? Princess dresses and tea parties. Going to your first Free Comic Book Day? These things just happened, so how is it that you are already growing into a young woman with big thoughts and ideas. How is it even possible? Possible or not Eva is now a teen. She had a fantastic birthday with our traditional birthday breakfast. That was after her Facetime call with Auntie Tara and Uncle Erik and opening the gifts that Auntie Tara got her including some sweet new shoes. Converse All-Stars, of course. Then we went to NorthWorks and she got a huge meal. While she ordered pancakes they brought her French Toast and she gave it a try. She discovered that she liked it a lot. Then I brought her to dance and we had a nice conversation along the ride.  She had a special Zoom...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00648 We received the Mixy Squish Deluxe pack from The Horizon Group for free to play with and review. Opinions are my own. Finding things for Andy to do that do not involve a screen have proven to be… interesting. He does his schoolwork on his days at home while he is in hybrid school. He’s in school one day and not in school the next. It is on those days in between where he needs something creative to do. He also needs to be able to do it independently because I have work that needs to get done. That is why I am grateful to Horizon Group USA for adding me to their program and for sending some fantastic creative products our way. We received a package of their Mixy Squish. It is Textured Air Dry clay. This is perfect for Andy because he loves creating things and he loves clay and slime and all of those things. I left him to his own devices and he attempted to recreate the fish from the front of the Mixy Squish guide. I think he did a fantastic job and made all t...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00647 This year has brought the rise of drive by birthdays or birthday parades going by people’s homes. Well, this Saturday we are having one for Eva’s birthday. We had attended one a ways back for a friend of Andy’s and they gave out goodie bags to everyone that had a cookie inside. It was a store bought frosted cookie and was tasty enough but I got the idea to make Eva’s birthday parade special for everyone that came.  We were going to get cookies made by Mrs. Packer. Mrs. Packer cookies are famous at the school events. She does incredible work and we hired her to take the playbill for Percy Jackson – The Lightning Thief the Musical and make them cookies. When I picked them up today I was thrilled with how amazing they turned out. Eva was even more excited. She was blown away by the work and the detail. I cannot wait to see what people think about them tomorrow. We’re going to do some very special ones for Andy’s birthday parade as well. We had one extra c...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00646 Tonight we attended a special virtual event for Eva’s Birthday. We bought tickets earlier this week to see Rick Riordan speak about this most recently released book. The Trials of Apollo: The Tower of Nero. This is the 5th and final book in the series and is the 15th book in the Percy Jackson world. Fifteen years of this story coming together in this last book. Eva is so excited to finally read it. she has read everything that Rick Riordan, or Uncle Rick as fans call him, has written.  The funny thing is, she had no interest whatsoever in this series when I attempted to introduce her to it a few years ago. Then we went to the Lightning Thief musical in Boston and she came out of that a huge fan. She read all the books and has re-read them and listened to each one on Audible. We have not only the entire Percy Jackson series on Audible but also Rick’s two other series which he also wrote in that 15 year span since the release of The Lightning Thief. We h...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00645 We received a copy of Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Begins for free from Hasbro to play with and review. Opinions are our own. In our family we enjoy playing all sorts of board games. We love storytelling and being creative. We’re fans of She-Ra, The Dragon Prince and other epic multi-arc kids shows and also kids books like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and more. We’ve attended the Granite State Comicon where the kids cosplayed their own original characters. Eva plays MAGIC the gathering with me and Andy plays Pokemon. The kids love games. They love adventure and excitement. The enjoyed the heck out of Dungeon Mayhem: Monster Madness which is also from Wizards of the Coast. Eva even played Dungeons & Dragons with friends this Summer. Andy, is just not quite there yet so when I heard about the Board Game Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Begins I had to see about reviewing it with the kids. This game is the next logical step before we begin playing full ...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00644 We received a review copy of Math Match from University Games for free to try out and review. Opinions are my own. Kids are in hybrid schooling, quarantine or lockdown all over the country. Parents are looking for quality entertainment and learning options for their kids. Luckily University Games has some entertaining options for kids. One of their latest games is called Math Match and I was able to play it with Andy. The game is pretty simple and in order for their to be a level playing field Adults have one set of objectives and kids have another. You roll a pair of dice and look at the two numbers on the dice. Adults can then multiply those two numbers to get the target number, then they need to look at 7 number cards on the table and using math get as close as they can to matching that number. If they get a math match then they win the cards.  Andy was very good at this. He was able to add and subtract quickly while I had to use multiplication and ...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00643 Eva completed painting her room today. She did about 85% of the job herself. Because she did the job on the weekend I was unable to help her out for most of it. I sleep during the day on the weekends and work overnights. I was able to get Eva started on Friday with some instruction and also doing the cutting in at the ceiling. That was only one wall. She completed the other three walls including cutting in at the ceiling. She hadn’t even tried that when I was in the room. She did all of the taping around the molding and did a really nice job. She does have to learn how to clean the brushes better but all in all it was a good experience all around.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00642 Each morning Allison and I take a 3 1/2 mile walk. Park of the walk is around the local park and this morning there were two people making giant bubbles. I didn’t get the greatest picture of this but they were taking turns making the bubbles and also photographing the bubbles. It was nice. Made me think of the giant bubbles that we checked out this Summer: WOWmazing Giant Bubble Wands Kits.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00641 I posted yesterday’s photo of Eva and the can of paint to my Instagram and Facebook wall. People really responded to it and were amazed that I was going to let her paint her room herself. You just have to say to yourself, “It’s only paint.” The good thing about painting is that you can paint over if you mess up. She is growing up and wants to have more independence so it is easy to start with something like this. I got her all set up and then showed Eva and Andy how to prep the can, dip the brush and wipe the excess off. Had them get a damp rag to clean up any spots that got on the floor, too. I cut in the ceiling because I’m tallest and Eva did not feel comfortable doing it herself. I was happy to do it. The kids did much of the painting of this one wall themselves, unsupervised. I had to get some sleep before work so I just let them go at it and take care of the painting. We’re going to go around the room fairly slowly because we have to shift things arou...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00640 Eva is very excited to paint her room. She picked out the color a while back and now and has been itching to get painting. She has worked really hard to clean her room and have it ready to go. We discussed it and she wants to do the painting herself with me cutting in along the ceiling. She’ll prep and then paint. Andy wants to paint as well because, whatever Eva is doing he wants to do too.