BenSpark Family Adventures

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00762 We received a free copy of Flash Facts to read and review. Opinions are our own. Getting kids to learn about Science can be tricky but I think that DC Kids Comics has a fantastic learning tool in their new, and first ever STEM themed book called Flash Facts. The book is even curated by a Neuroscientist, Mayim Bialik, PHD! You may recognize that name if you have been watching The big Bang theory but if you are a child of the 80’s like me then you first met Mayim in the sitcom Blossom. I was not a fan of Beaches or I would have known who she was even earlier as she portrayed the young Bette Midler in that movie. But, acting aside Mayim is a straight up scientist and mom raising two boys. She’s even an author in her own right. A multi-faceted person for sure and she does a great job curating this collection of ten different comic stories that each delve into a different science field that is exciting and informative for kids. In this book we get to see Cyborg ...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00761 One of Eva’s favorite book series is Percy Jackson and the Olympians. There is a character named Nico Di Angelo. In one of the books he is depicted as wearing a black shirt with a skeleton Pegasus for Camp Half-Blood. She found the design on Redbubble and we ordered it for her. She is so thrilled to wear it. Not sure if she is going to take it off ever again.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00760 There is just something about Hot Wheels. They are fairly inexpensive and have incredible designs. I mostly collect character cars for Marvel and Disney but occasionally I find a car or two that really speak to me. That was the Baja Bug. The color and the look stood out to me as well as the big tires. When I was taking the photo the rims of the wheels caught the light from my display case for my Skylanders.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00759 I received a free Beef Jerky Flower Bouquet from The Manly Man Company to check out and review. Opinions are my own. I am a fan of Beef Jerky. I enjoy many different kinds. In the past I’ve checked out some of the Manly Man Company products but never their Beef Jerky Flowers. These are awesome! There are a dozen of these Beef Jerky Flowers in a package and there are three different options with three different flavors. You can get your flowers in a pint glass, beer mug or a steel pint glass. The flavor choices are Original, Hot, Teriyaki or you can get a mix of the three flavors. I received the pint glass with a mixture of the three flavors. The petals are made from 100% beef and the stems are a mixture of beef, pork and spices. The Manly Man Company not only has these awesome Beef Jerky Flowers, they also have maple candied bacon jerky stemless roses. For Valentine’s day they have Meathearts™, Meat Cards™, Single Malt Scotch Caramel Heart Tins, Manly Scent...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00758 Andy used the clay that he received for Christmas to create some fun little figures. He made a bunch of them, too. He made a whole Happy Meal from McDonald’s as his clay creation.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00757 I took Andy on a little lunchtime adventure today. He had wanted to go to Sonic for his birthday and several other times after that but we hadn’t had the time to drive down to it. Today he has had to start coming with me to my Krav Maga classes and while he is there he has to start his school Zoom Math class. As a reward for not complaining about the changes and having to come with me I took him for lunch at Sonic. Let’s just say that we probably overdid ourselves. When we arrived back home Andy exclaimed. “I’m pregnant with a Sonic Baby!” That one got a big kick out of Allison.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00756 I finished all of Fenyx Rising and that includes finding everything in the game. The game is a super vast one with tons of things that you can do so occasionally I look to online guides for maps that show where certain things are located. Then I go find the things or fight the monsters. In the game there are several armor sets, wings, weapons, and much more. I think that out of all the vaults I went into I only missed one chest in a wraith vault. That and there is one glitch that does not give me the proper version of one of the armor sets. Once you finish the game you can replay it at a harder level. I played on Normal and then started the next time through on Hard. The nice thing is that you end up with everything you collected and all of your abilities intact. That makes going through the game so much easier the second time around. I thought this looked cool in Night Sight so I used that feature on my phone to take the photo tonight.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00755 Around Christmas there were some Mandalorian sets of Pez dispensers at Target. I picked them up to add to my collection of the different Pez dispensers that I have. I love how the Grogu (Baby Yoda) one is such a tiny one compared to Mando in his shiny Beskar armor.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00754 Andy has been taking to building a lot of LEGO lately. He’s been into the LEGO Super Mario sets and even bought a few more with some Christmas money. He picked out a couple more LEGO Mario sets and also some Brick Headz that look like pandas. Today he build this skate park set. It is a really cute set with four minifigs including one in a wheelchair. We built the set together. He built the skate park while I built the car. It was nice that the set had two separate instruction books so that we could be building at the same time. It was nice to do that with him.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00753 I took tonight off of work so that I could complete Phase training at America’s Best Defense. This was a three hour training night that went over the entire under-belt curriculum. It is open for those who are brown belt or higher. This training is to get students ready for Boot Camp that prepares them for the black belt test. I’m still over a year away from being able to test for my black belt but I am so excited about earning that rank. I have so much more to learn and do before that day but I feel better about it after going through this training. There were so many things that we did during the night. I made sure that I never looked at my watch because I wanted to make sure that I got that feeling of being there for 3 hours and it have been 15 minutes. I do have to say that I help up pretty well through the night. My training partner was a second degree black belt and he helped me so much through the night. He was encouraging, challenging and very gracio...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00752 While we were at Karate this afternoon Andy read from one of his kids graphic novels. This one is all about Black Canary. He was really excited to read it and he’s been doing a great job of reading while Eva is training. We don’t allow Andy or Eva to bring in electronics to the dojo. Andy got a bunch of great DC Kids comics recently and he’s been pouring through all of them. He’s now on The Black Canary. Even Eva wants to read it. There is another book on the way that is a STEM themed book that is being curated by Mayim Bialik from The Big Bang Theory. It is called Flash Facts where the different DC characters talk about STEM topics. We’ll be reviewing that soon.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00751 I ordered myself some new jeans from Amazon. This will probably be the way I will buy jeans from now on because they always have my specific size. That size is now lower. I had been running around with larger and longer pants. I think the waist size is easy enough to find but it is the length that always causes and issue. At least it was always tough to find the right length in the store. But with Amazon I can place a quick order and get those new jeans in a day or two. We were goofing around an Allison was commenting on how my jeans were so much less baggy. I was doing a silly dance to make the kids giggle and then took this silly selfie. That mirror comes in handy.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00750 With Christmas over we cleaned up the hallway upstairs and moved the hope chest into my office. About a ear ago we got a vanity from one of Allison’s friends who was moving. It had been sitting in the garage for a while. We did not realize that there was a missing piece of wood that connected the top of the vanity to the bottom. My dad came back home and he cut a strip of wood for us so that we could assemble the vanity. With that piece of wood we were able to put the vanity together and set up up n the hallway. Allison also ordered a new laundry basket that would fit between the vanity and our bedroom. The laundry baskets did not fit well in that space and this looks much nicer.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00749 Andy is always looking to bake something. Today he wanted to make cake balls but that becomes a bit of a project that neither myself or Allison were interested in taking on. We then decided that Andy would bake a red velvet cake. However, I forgot to grease the pan and so the kids made cake balls after all.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00748 Bandai sent us two of their Wave 3 Bandai Digimon devices to try out and review. Opinions are or own. Do you remember the Tamagotchi craze from the 90’s where you had this little Tamagotchi pet in a pocket device. Well, imagine that you now raise that pet to battle other pets. But the pets are Digimon that are little monster that you raise, care for and set out to battle other Digimon. Well, that is what Bandai Digimon are all about. You raise your Digimon from an egg to a child to a full blown Digimon monster. You feed it, train it, clean up after it and then battle other Digimon with it. Not only can you battle random Digimon that show up on your device but you can also link two devices together and battle your friends. This unique toy can be clipped to a backpack so that you are always ready to battle your friends. You can even turn the sound off so as not to get in trouble at school with all the beeps and chirps that come from the device alerting you to...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00747 The days after Christmas are usually ones where I do a lot of purchases because I ask for gift cards and I use Christmas money to get a lot of the things that I would like. This week some things arrived like the LEGO NES set, some Transformers Funko Pop! figures and I bought some new headphones. These are the Turtle Beach Stealth Gen 2 wireless headphones. The selling point for me is that these headphones can not only connect to my XBox wirelessly but to my cellphone via Bluetooth simultaneously. That means that when I am working from home and using my XBox I can make sure that I do not miss any calls coming in. Before I had to do this by wearing over the ear headphones and in ear Bluetooth ear buds. Not the greatest option but I made it work. I also got these because I run the company switchboard on the weekends and the headset that I received from work was terrible. With a USB adapter I can connect the headset to my work computer and take calls using it a...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00746 Eva painted this watercolor of her friend today. She just decided that watercolor was what she was going to work with today and she created this. It is a gift for her friend along with a set of books that she got for Christmas, that she already had. I saw them at the comic book store and thought that they would be perfect for Eva. I guess they were because she already had them and really enjoyed them. She’s sharing her enthusiasm for the books with her friend as well as this beautiful watercolor. I have talented kids.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00745 LEGO and Nintendo have been working together this year with a ton of different sets. There is the Super Mario series of LEGO sets that let you play with a LEGO Super Mario as he jumps all over different coded bricks. Another set has emerged and that is the LEGO Nintendo Entertainment set. This one is over 2500 bricks and recreates a LEGO NES console as well as a TV with a working version of Super Mario. There is a crank in the back of the TV that moves the side scrolling game along so that you can make Mario jump and run across the screen. I believe that you can also add the LEGO Super Mario set to the top of the TV. I can’t wait to build this and display it.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00744 For the past several months I have been collecting Funko Pop! figures of the Avengers. The set of six figures connect together to recreate the most iconic moment of the movie, The Avengers. At this point the camera pans around the group of six Avengers as they prepare to take on The Chitauri. This is one of those amazing hero moments that solidifies the group before the battle. The Avengers are united. They ae Assembled! When I first saw this I knew I wanted it and as it got closer I knew exactly how I would display it. I would display it on the Lazy Susan from my Grandmother’s dining room table. We no longer have the table but I kept that Lazy Susan. I was fascinated by it as a kid and that was the only thing I wanted when my Grandparents moved. Now it sits atop a hope chest that is Allison’s in my office. I can freely spin it whenever I’d like to see the Avengers ready themselves for battle. It looks like you can still find this on Amazon except for The H...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00743 One of the finds that we came across in cleaning out my parent’s house was sticker collections. Back in grade school I was big into collecting stickers. I had a very large collection and then one day part of my collection was stolen at school. It was something that I still think on to this day. The stickers that we discovered during the clean out were probably a compilation of all the collections from myself and my two sisters. I took them home. I removed them all from their sticker books, there were quite a few. I then organized them and started putting them back into a brand new sticker album. They are not the collection I once had but they are pretty impressive overall. I am pretty sure that I have some more around here somewhere in a box or something that I need to go through.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00742 A couple ears back I ended a 14 year photo-a-day run bey forgetting to take a photo that day. Being cooped up at home every day during the pandemic has brought challenges to finding interesting things to photograph. I forgot today, but I did take this photo of the game Fenyx Rising while I was playing so that I could solve a riddle in the game. I’ve been playing this game a lot lately and I realize that if I had a cell phone with a camera and could have photographed things along the way in other games I probably could have solved things a lot faster as a kid. However, I probably wouldn not be as good as I am today at solving puzzles when they come up in the games that I am playing now.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00741 Today is Allison’s birthday and after an early dinner from Chub’s Blue Pig BBQ we went for a family walk around the park. On the way back I noticed that the shadows were super long stretching out ahead of us. I was walking next to Eva and we were joking around how our shadows were crossing the street well before we did. The image looked cool so I waited till Allison and Andy had turned the corner and then took a photo. I started thinking about the meaning of the term “Casts a Long Shadow” which is to have considerable influence over people or events. This can often have a negative meaning but I like to think that it can be positive, too. When I personally think about the people who have had influence over me in my life and who despite being gone still do, there are more positives than negatives. So I hope that one day my influence over my own children and the events of their lives will be a good things and not thought of as negative in any way. Of course, I...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00740 Eva has been finding her own voice as of late. She’s finding more of her own music suited to her tastes. She’s also rediscovering things that she has had in her life from a very early age. Some of those things are a set of toys that I got her several years ago. They are female super heroes based on principals and qualities instead of specific powers. When I first learned about the I Am Elemental action figures I knew that they would be the perfect action figures for Eva. The company made them to have real world bodies and be focused more on characteristics and qualities than being characters themselves. The first set was called the Elements of Courage. The Courage set includes: Bravery, Energy, Honesty, Industry, Enthusiasm, Persistence, and Fear. I funded the original I Am Elemental: Elements of Courage set back in 2013 or 2014 on Kickstarter. They arrived in time for Christmas 2014 and that is when Eva received her set. They came in a collector’s lunchbox...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00739 When I was a kid I had this vintage pedal car fire truck. I mean, it was brand new at the time and now it is vintage. It was made out of metal and had little ladders on either side. It has been sitting in my parent’s basement for years now. When they moved it became mine again. The kids are booth too big for it and it does not work properly anymore. It needs to be restored if anyone is to actually use it in the future. That is not something I have any interest in doing. I have no grand aspirations of my grandchildren riding around in it some day. I just don’t. I enjoyed it as a kid and it was fun. But it is time for it to move on. I listed it on Facebook and found a buyer. A young man who does have aspirations of refurbishing it. Great. I am glad that someone will continue to enjoy this and put in the work to restore it.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00738 Funko sent me this Ash Hot Topic Exclusive Funko Pop! figure for free to check out and review. Opinions are my own. I was in college the first time I saw Army of Darkness starring Bruce Campbell. I wasn’t so sure about watching it because it was part of the Evil Dead series and I am not a horror movie kind of guy. This movie was different, however. While it did have some crazy scary looking characters it was not horror in the way that I had known horror movies. It wasn’t a slasher movie or something like that. This move was fun and funny as all get out because of Bruce Campbell’s performance as Ash.  So, in Evil Dead 2 Ash gets his hand infected with Evil so he hacks it off and attaches a chainsaw to it to fight the evil. In Army of Darkness he is pulled into either a another dimension or into the past. I am not sure which. He’s a man out of time and fish out of water but it doesn’t faze him at all. He rolls with it and makes a bunch of mistakes and ul...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00737 Eva got Immortals Fenyx Rising for Christmas. I had seen that a video game was coming that was similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in that it was open world play where you had to solve puzzles and perform feats while fighting tons of different monsters. This game is set in the world of the Greek gods and you play as a shield bearer who becomes a hero as he or she (depending upon how you create your character) helps the gods against Typhon, one of the Titans. Typhon has stolen the essences of some of the gods and it is up to you to help get them back. The story is narrated by Prometheus (the guy who stole fire and gave it to us but was chained to a rock to have his liver eaten by a raven daily for all eternity) as he tells the story to Zeus. Eva has been really enjoying this game. She likes the puzzles and the open world. She’s picking up on everything really quickly, too. I had been looking forward to the game as well but it is a one player g...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00736 I’ve got to hand it to our kids. This past year was a rough one with so many changes in the world and so much changed at school. The kids do a hybrid model of schooling where they are home one day and at school the next. Andy and Eva have both settled into this new model and are both doing very well. Eva has always been pretty self sufficient and so I am not surprised at her response to the changes. She does her work and spends a lot of time getting school work or projects done each day. There are many projects that she continues to work on. Andy has really impressed me this year. He’s gotten all of his schoolwork done. He gets his Zoom classes set up and works very hard on projects. He’s even doing more artistic projects lately because he just loves creating with clay. He takes care of getting his own lunches most of the time. When he does need help it is with things that he wants to cook like mac and cheese or his favorite, an omelet. He was on a HUGE ome...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00735 Torunn has found a new spot to sit. We moved a new couch and chair into the house recently and she claimed the chair. Well, she claimed the chair, I claimed the chair, and so did Eva. And yes, there have been times when we have all tried to claim it at once. Eva gats all feisty now that she has some self defense moves so she often gets the chair. Having the new chair instead of the loveseat in this spot really makes the room bigger. Speaking of the loveseat and old couch. Those were picked up by the city today. We’d worn those out. They didn’t owe us anything. Hopefully we will not tear through this new set of furniture as quickly. I’ve already put a ban on eating in the living room because of the kids and their “woodchipper” tendencies.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00734 I was very excited to find out that Funko was making Pop! versions of some of my favorite Transformers characters. I pre-ordered all of them on Amazon and then found a Target exclusive version of Bumblebee. The Target version is the Chevy Camaro version and the regular is Bumblebee’s VW Bug version. These will go in a collection with Optimus Prime, Soundwave, Jazz and Megatron. I was going to shoot all of them but the Megatron one is still on the way. Once he arrives I will see about getting my originals out to shoot with them, although I never got Megatron as a kid because he was a gun. I never even picked up a re-issue of it because his toy was always loose and didn’t stand well. I do like that in the latest series he is a tank, that makes much more sense.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00733 Andy has been really excited about the LEGO super Mario sets. He bought the starter set last year and he asked for different add-on sets for Christmas. He received a bunch of them and today he built the Bowsers Castle set which is the largest set of the bunch. He did an awesome job, too. He’s assembled everything on the LEGO table so that he can make and remake the level and play the game. The Super Mario figure can read different parts of the game and score points and more. It is a really interesting thing that LEGO did to incorporate parts of the Super Mario franchise. There are lights and sounds on Mario. Mario has an expressive face and he makes tons of Super Mario sounds, too. I think he may expand his collection and create an even bigger play course. Not that he has much more room to expand.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00732 Well, here we are. A new year is upon us and there is much that needs to be done. We’re going to hold it together and keep on moving forward to make this a better year than the last. Today’s photo is of a mini suitcase that we got from Ellis Paul. We saw that he was doing a special New Year’s Eve show via Facebook Live and so we ordered these suitcases for us and for my sister, Tara and our friends, the Prestons. The show was a great way to usher in the new year last evening.