BenSpark Family Adventures

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01215 I’ve always thought of V-8 as an old person’s drink. Salty tomato juice made into Bloody Marys and things like that. V-8 now makes this energy drink and it is one of my favorite things to drink. I call it my old man energy drink.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01214 Oh Hasbro, this is your second try with a LEGO-Like toy. First there was KRE-O and while that was okay for a few Transformers figures it was not as good as LEGO. Now there is this other type of LEGO-Like toy and it is even worse. I got these at Big Lots because they had Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes. I tried building the sets last night and they were terrible. One of the wheel on the motorcycle broke as I attempted to put it into place. It is as if no one even tested these toys to see if they fit together right. Terrible. I was very disappointed in them. Even the little LEGO like figures of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow could not redeem these.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01213 Tonight Allison an I went to see comedian Nate Bargatze. This was her gift to me on Christmas 2019. That was the year that we went and got each other comedy events for gifts and both events got rescheduled. But, Nate Bargatze’s show was rescheduled many times. He was very funny and we had a great night. There was a couple in front of us who were taking selfies and each time they did I was right behind them and I tried to turn my head or something and not be in their photos. at the end of the show I took this photo with Allison and who is behind looking over my shoulder? The guy who was in front of us! He’s turned his head and it looks like he’s peeking over my shoulder. I was trying to take the photo quickly because everyone was leaving the theater and I didn’t have a moment to check and see what was behind me. We got a laugh out of it.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01212 Today was National Super Hero Day. I didn’t do much about it like I have in year’s past. I was looking through many of my old photos when they came up in Facebook memories and I have lots of photos of Eva dressed in Super Hero outfits. It is funny that now she is doing so many cosplays. Tonight should have been another cupcake class for Andy. It was cancelled because the bakery did not supply enough cupcakes. That stinks and he was bummed. So, instead I took Andy and Eva for some ice cream at Dairy Queen. He seemed okay about that but he’s really enjoyed his decorating classes. We try and encourage him to do these classes as often as we can. He has so much fun. I selected the Deadpool super hero because he has a baker’s hat on.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01211 Our local pizza place has an item on the menu called Pretzel Nachos. It was national pretzel day today so I ordered some to try out. They were really good but it was way too much for me so I saved some for Allison and the Kids. If I was to get it again I’d order it for the whole family so we can all enjoy it fresh and not reheated. Although, Andy loved it either way. He was all about the Pretzel-chos.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01210 When we were at the Wicked Comic Con I picked up a bear claw necklace. Eva and I were talking about creating a cosplay character and how this would be a good part of it. I was also looking for something to photograph tonight and trying to catch the detail of the necklace against the bokeh of the lights from my display case of Skylanders toys.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01209 The other day we were talking about a book series that I have been reading about Dungeons and Dragons. In that there is a character named Guenhwyvar. The character is a giant black panther and is the companion of the character Drizzt Do’Urden. The panther’s name means shadow in high elvish. I was telling the kids about it and Andy said that was the name of the van in Onward. The van is named Guinevere after King Arthur’s wife. They sound similar. Last night on my way to work I stopped in at Target and they had a Hot Wheels of the van from Onward. I had to pick it up for my collection.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01208 Our side yard garden area has been pretty lackluster since we moved in. For the past few years it has become a place where I’ve piled fallen limbs from our trees. I had the area cleaned out this week and we’ll have to figure out something to do with this area. It is nice to see it cleared at least.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01207 I got a notification earlier in the week that Fire Wagon Pizza was going to be at Capron Park Zoo. We went over at lunch and picked up a few pizzas and then had a picnic pizza lunch at the park. It was a nice day weather-wise and it was good to get a nice walk to the park and enjoy lunch together. A good end to the April vacation.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01206 We have these two boats in the upstairs bathroom on the back of the bathtub. It has been several years since we have had need of these but they are still there. I plan to put them aside for grand kids at some point. They were such nice toys for the tub. Great for play and for pouring water on the kids.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01205 The weather is nice and finally no rain so Andy is back to enjoying climbing trees. He loves this spot in the tree in the back yard. We have two of these trees, one big enough for climbing, this one and the other is small and scrawny and we’ll be cutting that one down.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01204 Andy did some cupcake decorating today with Allison’s help. Andy has been itching to bake and with all of the skills he has been learning from his cupcake decorating classes he wanted to show them off. Today he made a whole bunch of different cupcakes including cute hedgehogs, kitties and more. I thought that this cat was so well done. He used pieces of chocolate for the ears and made cute little eyes for it, too. I’m very impressed with what he can do with cake icing. Today was getting back into the swing of things. I went back to Krav Class after being sick last week. It was rough getting back on a conditioning week especially when I am not at 100%, but I got through it. Eva and Andy also had good classes this afternoon.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01203 Tonight after dinner Andy wanted to use the Fire Pit to make S’mores. the fire pit had not been lit since before the winter and the flames were quite low. I think there was a bunch of water inside that needed to burn off or maybe the gas was low. Either way it did not appear to be working that well. I probably should have covered that instead of the table and chairs all Winter. I’m sure it will get plenty more use this year. We came home from the Cape today. I took Eva with me and Andy rode with Allison. I downloaded the audio book of Ready Player One and started it as soon as we got in the car. Eva and I listened to it on the ride home and when we got to our exit we’d finished the prologue and the first chapter. She asked if this was my plan now to get her to like things. Trap her in a place she could not escape and just make her listen. She really liked the start of the book as I expected she would. I hope that she continues on and listens to the rest of ...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01202 Today was Easter and we started out with an Easter Egg hunt at Mem and Grandfathers with the kids and the cousins. Last night Andy caught us filling the Easter Eggs. He seemed okay about it even shouting that he knew it. However, when he went upstairs he was sobbing about it. Tara and I both comforted him and he eventually got to sleep. He didn’t say anything more about it today when he was tearing around the house looking for eggs. The kids had a nice egg hunt and then we had breakfast. We went to 11 am Mass over at Saint Anthony’s and then came home and had a nice lunch. We relaxed for the afternoon and then watched Better Nate than Ever for a movie tonight. Andy really enjoyed that movie and it was cute. I had only gotten to see half of it one night with him and he told me later that he really enjoyed it. I think my parents also enjoyed it. Andy has a good taste in movies overall.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01201 Andy and I went over to the Ball Field today so that we could drive around my remote control car. We also brought he Zing Bows and Arrows so that we could shoot them across the field. Andy had fun running after the arrows and chasing around the car. He drove it a few times as well. This new RC car is really fast and with two batteries I can run it for about a half hour before we are done. On the way back we walked along the beach. It had been quite windy the night before and the sand had these wavy ripples to it. Andy wanted to go take a photo of them but he got too close to see the ripples. I took the one above to show how the wind made the ripples. Tonight we had my sister Shelby, her husband Tim and her kids over for dinner. Allison and Eva came down today as well. They were home because they had haircuts scheduled for today. It gave me some extra time with Andy. I took Andy to the movies this afternoon, too. He had been waiting for the cousins to arrive...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01200 Today Andy, Tara dad and I went to Harwich to visit Grandma Bennett. Along the way we stopped at Marathon sports so dad could get some new sneakers. We also stopped at Captain Baker’s Donuts so that we could get a bunch of Easter themed donuts. We went to Captain Baker’s last Summer and it was an amazing place with fantastic donuts. Today Andy made his own donut a Chocolate cake donut with maple glaze bacon and caramel drizzle. It looked amazing except for maple, I’m not a fan. I got a few of the Glazed and Confused donuts. What I did not know until they were done making them was that the yellow drizzle was banana. I hate banana. Luckily, it was not a overpowering taste and when I ate the donut I could not taste banana at all. I also got a couple of other donuts to bring home and one for Grandma and one for Dad plus some gluten-free ones for Tara and my mom. We took the donuts to Grandma’s house and ate them there. Grandma was so happy to see us. It has bee...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01199 Apparently Target has decided that because people make Gingerbread houses for Christmas that there should be various other holiday houses to make and so for Easter they had a bunny hutch and a chicken coop that you could make and decorate. I know how much Andy likes to decorate things so I picked up the chicken coop for him to do. He made it today when we got down to the The Cape.  I decided to take him for a few days before everyone came down for Easter so that we could spend some time together and so that he could spend some time with his grandparents and aunt before everyone else came down. We drove down and spent the afternoon with everyone. I picked up some Paul’s Pizza for dinner for Andy, Dad and myself. Tara went to Estia for pizza for herself and my mom. After dinner we watched the movie Back to the Outback. Andy and Auntie Tara really enjoyed it because of the ties to Australia.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01198 When we were at Wicked Comic Con Eva and I picked up this framed sketch of Bruce Lee with one of his famous quotes on it for our Krav Instructor Mr. Brochu. Mr. Brochu quotes Bruce Lee often and we figured that this one would be a perfect gift for him. This sketch was from the artist (Bun Leung) that I really liked and spent a bunch of time and money at his booth at the con. I got about 10 stickers from him and four framed pictures. He had this really nice one of four people walking in that famous Beatles location and they were Steve Irwin, Bob Ross, Mr. Rogers and Stan Lee they represented Curiosity, Joy Imagination and Kindness. We almost got that for Andy because he is going to be Bob Ross for the Living Wax museum next month.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01197 Today Andy’s class performed a living Stations of the Cross. He was one of the Roman Soldiers in the performance. The kids performed the whole thing and then afterwards they redid each scene so that families could take photos. I took photos of each station and then at the end zoomed in on Andy. This appears to capture his impish look really well. My parents came up so that they could see Andy’s performance. It was nice to see them and they were excited to see Andy in this. I’m still getting over a little cold that I picked up at the Comic Con this past weekend. It is a head cold but not COVID because I have been testing myself every day. I’ve been staying out of Krav classes just so I don’t get anyone else sick and I’m pretty sure I would have a terrible time trying to breathe and fight while having to blow my nose every two seconds.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01196 Just a few things from my Birthday. Much of what you see came from our trip to The Wicked Comic Con. Andy picked out a few toys for me like the He-Man hot wheels and the Batman Hot Wheels toys plus the Avenger’s LEGO set. He also drew me a birthday card with The Transformers faction symbols on it. The Autobot symbol is on the inside. I picked up a ton of stickers from different artists that I saw at the show. There are Ninja Turtle ones and Transformers ones and even a Link one from The Legend of Zelda. I’ll have to check out one artist’s site because he had a ton of stickers and little paintings. We picked up 4 framed prints from him including the one of the four turtles that I am keeping. We got pictures for Allison and Andy, too. We also got one for our Krav instructor, Mr. Brochu. I’ll show that in a future post.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01195 We drove to Marlboro today to enjoy brunch at Firefly’s. This is an amazing BBQ place. We had such an excellent meal. We started off with a round of appetizers and that really did us in because when the main meal come around we were stuffed to the gills. We did have some of the main meal but we have a ton left over for dinner tomorrow night. We got the Fried Pickles, Candied Bacon and Roo’s Crazy Wings. Our main meal was a family picnic with ribs, pulled pork, fired chicken and even more. It was an incredible meal and we’ll enjoy it again tomorrow.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01194 This year for my birthday “I took the night off work so that I could take Eva into Boston for the Wicked Comic Con. This was a daddy/daughter day to replace our Father Daughter Dance that we did not get to celebrate. In all honesty this was the type of event that was more our speed. Eva got dressed in her Technoblade cosplay. Technoblade is a character from a Minecraft thing called Dream SMP. Eva has been working on this cosplay for a while. She has such joy doing it. When we walked into the con there was a a kid who immediately recognized Eva’s cosplay and asked if they could get a photo with her. She was over the moon. Throughout the day she was recognized over and over and took many photos with people. We walked through the con and checked out all sorts of artists and vendors. There was a booth selling fake swords. Eva picked up one of The Witcher’s swords, The Wolf. The did not get his second sword, The Snake. she found it absurd that The Witcher has tw...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01193 I picked up some special ice cream for my birthday. Normally I do not go for cookie dough but this sounded just different enough to really spark my interest. It was quite good.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01192 Funko sends me some of their Pop! figures for free to unbox and review. Opinions are my own. I’m a big fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The Turtles have an ally named Casey Jones. He is a vigilante who uses a golf bag full of sports equipment to fight the bad guys in the Foot Clan. This figure is one of the special PX Previews Limited-Edition B&W Chase figures. My primary knowledge of Casey Jones is from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and Casey Jones was played by Elias Koteas. He was one of my favorite parts of the movie. I love the whole Casey and Raphael dynamic. The two play off each other so well. I’m happy to now have Casey Jones as part of my collection. The figure is awesome with his two baseball bats, he’s ready to clean up the sewers alongside his turtle pals.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01191 Andy loves going to the cupcake decorating classes at The Creative Sewing Studio. He has now been to three of them and these latest cupcakes are some of his best ever. Today he made a fawn, a fox and a hedgehog. Each of them were equally cute and tasty. We enjoyed eating them very much. Andy chose the hedgehog for his and Eva had the fawn while Allison and I split the fox.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01190 I picked up 20lbs of rice from Stop and Shop today. Eva had an idea for a project. She wanted to make a weighted stuffed animal and so she took one of the stuffed animals that we got from the company picnic (when we used to have them) and sewed up several little sacks to stuff inside. Each is filled with Rice. I think she used a total of 12 of the 20 lbs of rice to make this a hefty weighted stuffed animal.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01189 I shop at Big Lots from time to time. They are right around the corner and I can often find strange food there. They had this cookie/hazelnut spread and I picked it up for the kids. It looks like something one might spread on a graham cracker or a shortbread cookie. The kids love Nutella and Eva loves Bischoff cookies. I figured that this would be the perfect pairing for her to try. No one has tried it yet but soon. very soon.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01188 My electronics are almost always covered in stickers. I had ordered a bunch of Marvel and Transformers stickers a while back and gave a bunch to Andy and to my nephew Dylan. After giving so many away I had a bunch left over. They had been in a stack on my desk until today. I was looking at my computer and there was a large bare side that needed some decoration. I also use command strip hooks so I can hang up my headphones. I had actually taken a photo of this before this one and then looked over the cords attached to the front of the computer.  I figured that I should go and take the USB items off the front ports to neaten things up but it makes accessing the charging cords for my xBox controller batteries and my headphones easier. I was able to add the headphone charging cord to the back of the computer and the xBox controller charging item will just be moved to the top of the computer. It looks neater. I have a USB hub that I use to switch all my thi...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01187 Tonight was supposed to be the first Father-Daughter Dance since the pandemic started two years ago. We were on track to go and then COVID hit our house. Eva got a positive result this past Monday and so she cannot go out for 5 days which brought us to tonight. She cannot attend because of that. We’ve known this since Monday and we’ve been very upset over it. This would have been the last Father-Daughter Dance of her grade school career. I hate that this was stolen from her because of this stupid virus. We’ll do something special on another night. And there is always the Feehan Father Daughter Dances. But this should have been a happy night of dancing and fun. Instead I cancelled my PTO and just worked. Allison suggested that we get dressed up next Saturday night and celebrate my birthday in a fancy way. That is not how I want to do my birthday, though. I’m more of a Wings and BBQ kind of guy. We’ll do something fun together on that night, too.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01186 Yesterday Andy took it upon himself to make treats for everyone. He mad up some brownies. They look delicious, don’t they. Well, he put Andes' Candies in them and I dislike mint in my chocolate with the one exception of a York peppermint patty since that the outer chocolate of that candy cannot be considered chocolate, just a wrapper for the mint center. Everyone else enjoyed them and he did a great job making them. I just wish that he had come to get me to help him out and to show him that you use Timer on the microwave to set a timer instead of Time Cook. This kid and microwaves, I tell you. 40 minutes with the microwave on and he doesn’t notice. “I forgot” is this kid’s catch phrase. Yeesh!