BenSpark Family Adventures

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01823 I had the day off for New Year’s Eve and we took it easy most of the day. We prepared for our friends The PRestons to come over to celebrate the new year. They have two girls who are older than Andy and the other is older and Eva. However, they all get along so well and the kids have so many interests that compliment each other. We even learned that one daughter loves to paint swords. I think I know who to send The Sword of Omens when it is time to paint. Allison and I always have great conversations with Aaron and Denise. We haven’t seen each other in a long time but it was so nice to get back together as if no time had passed.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01822 Our first major print with the 3D printer is The Sword of Omens from The Thundercats. I wanted one for upcoming Comic Book Conventions. The build is in several stages and once it is all together is is fairly large. This is one part of the handle of the sword and it didn’t print that well so I am going to print it one more time. Hopefully that will print better. I’m getting better at the prints.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01821 I put the 3D printer through its paces a bit today. I found a file of the Thundercats logo and decided to print it out. It was very large and I did not add glue to the hotbed prior to printing so partway through the build it separated from the hotbed and did not come out as clean as it could have. It is fun watching these being printed. Interesting to see how each layer is made. The large print was 85 layers and took a little over 2 hours to print. I reduced the size to a 9mm diameter ad that made the print 73 layers and took about 46 minutes to print. The second time I put down some glue from a glue stick and it did not separate from the hotbed as it printed. The second print is so much smoother and precise. You can see on the outer rim of the build that it looks scruffy. That was because the bottom separated from the hotbed and I wasn’t sure if I should scrap the build or let it play out. I let it play out. I can use that one as a test for painting.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01820 We celebrated my friend Derek’s 50th birthday tonight at Towne Tavern. It was a very nice evening catching up with friends and sharing stories. Derek reminded me that there was also a birthday party for his 30th where many of the same people were in attendance. In face I was writing this blog 20 years ago and even have a post up of that night.  DEREK’S 30TH BIRTHDAY BASH! .  I have a lot of things documented in the past 20 years on this blog. so many things. While we have aged in that time we can still be transported back to the early days with all the funny stories that we have together. Before heading to the party I worked on setting up the 3D printer. I had a heck of a time getting the filament to get into the correct spot but about an hour before we were to leave I got it working and ran the benchmark print, a little boat called Benchy. The printer prints quite quickly and I’m looking forward to whatever else we can create.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01819 Eva got this black jean jacket/hoodie for Christmas. She immediately printed out several star constellations so that she could embroider them on the back of the jacket. did she know how to embroider before Sunday? No. She just decided that that was what she wanted to do and she started doing it. She’s been at this project for the past couple of days and has made a ton of progress on it. she is always very content to just work on a project or read a book or do her own thing. She did spend more time around everyone else this year because of her Loop earplugs. they allow her to be around the chaos and noise and not get overwhelmed. Definitely a good buy for her.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01818 Later this morning we went to The Cape to visit my parents for a couple of days. My sister Tara and her husband Erik were there and so were my sister Shelby and her kids. The younger cousins all played together nicely. Dylan got a Nintendo Switch for christmas so the kids played a lot of Mario Kart together. I’ve got a ton of games that I can share with him that he may enjoy. We set it up so that the two of us couple play head to head on our respective Switches. Eva worked hard on her embroidery project. She is embroidering stars on the back of her new jean jacket/hoodie. She worked on it most of the day. It was a rather foggy day. We arrived in fog and the kids went to the beach after we had opened our gifts and the stockings. It was so foggy that you could not see the water from the wall. We enjoyed a very nice meal for lunch and then had pizza for dinner and watched the movie the Christmas Chronicles. That is a good one for the whole family. It was nice ...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01817 Christmas Day here was a bit different than past years. We were going to be spending the entire day on our own because we’re spending the next couple of days with family on the Cape. We started off our morning with Stockings and cinnamon rolls. Allison made them fresh the other day and we had plenty for our morning. We took our time with everything and slowly opened our gifts. We didn’t go fully overboard this year because there was one big gift for everyone and Allison and I had already given ourselves a night out as a gift so we were a bit more reserved with the overall gift giving this year. Allison got the kids each some stuffed animals from IKEA that they loved. Andy got a octopus and Eva a shark. I just know that Eva is going to do some project with that. Andy was a the prankster by wrapping a can of soup for me that looked like a mug. I have this thing about the number of mugs we have in the house. There are too many so when we were shopping and Andy sugg...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01816 Christmas Eve this year was a little different. I worked overnight and normally I try and take both the weekend of Christmas and the Weekend of New Years off. However, with the small group that I am part of I did not want to leave everyone in a lurch so I did work a couple nights this weekend and had today off to get ready for tomorrow. I slept for a bit and when I got up I went over to Chubs Blue Pig BBQ to pick up our Christmas meal. This year since we were not going to be with everyone in the family we decided to switch things up and go for BBQ instead. Chubs had a order form a couple of weeks back so that we could get a few things that we liked and we could pick them up on Christmas Eve to warm them up on Christmas day. We went with ribs, pulled pork, wings and mac and cheese. I was able to pop in and pick everything up and get home to get ready for the rest of the day. We went to 4pm Mass at Sacred Heart. It was not packed as it had been on past years but th...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01815 The other day Allison took Andy shopping for Christmas and Andy picked up a few things for themselves. One thing was this LEGO Floral centerpiece. Andy built it yesterday and it now adorns out table for the holiday. while it is more of a Fall sort of thing it is still very pretty and makes a nice centerpiece.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01814 Everyone had the day off today so we worked on a few things leading up to Christmas. But first dad came down from the Cape to fix the kick plate in the bathroom. We had discovered that the outlet had been wired with too much power. He was able to fix that and connect the new kick plate so we’ll have heat in the bathroom now, just in time for the weather to get colder. After Dad finished and left I ran out to Target to pick up a few more gifts for Andy. Target was nuts. Allison took andy earlier in the day to shop for me for Christmas. Andy found things for me and also plenty of things for themselves. One thing that Andy got was a LEGO Floral set that makes a Floral centerpiece for the table. I did not know that they would enjoy something like that but they did. We had it on the table for dinner tonight. Allison sent me things that Andy picked out and I placed the order on the Target app to pick it up at the store. That was crazy, everyone else had the same ...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01813 Andy finished building the LEGO NES set today. They really liked how you can rotate the screen and the little mario character goes through the level. It was a great design. It was also rather complex but Andy had no trouble building it. I have to find a good place to display it in my office now. Not sure if I have the room but I’ll figure out something. This afternoon I decided to try out a recipe that I found on tik tok. I made a christmas candy out of peanuts, chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, pretzels and more. I put everything into a crock pot for 2 hours then stirred it together. Then let it continue in the crock pot for another 1/2 hour and then I spooned the mixture onto Pretzels. The photo is actually of all the rest of it pressed into a brownie pan. That we can cut into squares of the candy. It came out really nice. Super tasty.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01812 Tonight we had a Krav Maga social at The Town Tavern in North Attleboro. We had reserved the small room and had filled it up with so many people from class. It was really nice to see everyone and chat with everyone outside of class. These folks have become people that I enjoy spending a lot of time with. I was seated with a bunch of people that had gone through the same black belt test with me. We ad worked a lot with each other through Boot Camp and more. A friend took this photo and I borrowed it from her Facebook page because I did not take photos during the event. We had plenty of food and lots of conversation. It got super loud when the room was all filled up and the poor server was taking care of all of us. But we all had a really fun night together.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01811 Tonight Allison and I enjoyed our Christmas gift to each other. We got tickets to see Mike Birbiglia at The Wilbur. This was his holiday show that he decided to call Christmas Parmesan. Was it about Christmas? No. Was it about Italian food? No. It was just something silly that he named the show. The show as really good. We laughed really hard all through the show, but nowhere as hard as the woman two over from me. She laughed loudly at everything even slightly funny things. She had a great laugh and I think I laughed more because of it. We had a great night and some really good comedy. It was our first time seeing Mike live. We’ve been fans for so long, too. The kids had no school today because their schools had no power. andy got bored so I suggested that we built the TV portion of the LEGO NES set that I had. Andy really enjoyed working on that. We got our power back around 4:30 today. Eva and I were at Jr. Krav at the time because it was stripe test. We ...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01810 I was at Five Below and I saw that they had a chocolate chip cookie “gingerbread” house. I picked it up for Andy to build. Andy found it on Sunday morning and has been itching to build it ever since. They built it today. I took this photo of that tonight via candlelight as we had no power. There was a very big wind storm that happened and because of that we lost our power today. We did well to not open the fridge and kept warm with lots of blankets. It not only got windy but it also got rather cold. I lost a bunch more limbs off the tree. Nothing too huge but plenty of decent sized ones came down.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01809 Eva is constantly coming up with better and better makeup for her cosplays. She did this tripe scar over her eye today and it looks really good. Eva has been improving her skills with makeup by leaps and bounds. This will come in handy as she helps out with the Spring musical at school and works on costumes and hopeful on makeup as well. she has a lot of experience with face paints and such.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01808 A friend of mine sent me a Tik Tok today about there being a sale at Dollar General on LEGO sets. I looked up my local store and it said that a lot of the sets were out of stock but I decided to go anyway on my way to work. I’m glad that I did because I found a bunch of LEGO sets that I got for 50% off plus some additional discounts for picking up $75 worth of toys. While I was there I found this Wheeljack figure that was under $5. It is a simplistic one probably made specifically to be in dollar stores but it is of my favorite Transformer, Wheeljack so I picked it up. It was a great look and transforms easily. I’ll be displaying it on my desk in my office.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01807 Allison was out tonight so I had the kids decorate their mini Christmas trees so that Allison could see them when she returned home. We’re slowly getting everything ready for Christmas in 10 days. We still have a lot left to do but we’re keeping on track. I started keeping these trees and the ornament boxes for those trees up in the attic so it was easier to go and get them each season. I also keep Allison’s grandmother’s ceramic christmas tree up there and I went ahead and set that up in our bedroom as a surprise for her to see when she got home.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01806 Today’s photo was from the parking lot at Brennan. I spend a lot of time there picking Andy up from school. I dislike the whole pickup line thing mostly because of the other drivers not doing things the right way. However, being in the line gives me plenty of time to listen to audio books. Tonight was Andy’s parent teacher conferences. We got there and Andy’s teachers were sort of surprised that we had come in because Andy is doing so well this year. They each had very nice things to say about Andy and how they enjoy having andy in their classrooms. We’re new to the school and so wanted to make sure that we came in to see what the conferences were all about and to check in with Andy’s teachers to let them know how much andy is enjoying being in their classes. So, all good news to report.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01805 Andy had a half day today so after I picked them up from school we went to Target to do some Christmas Shopping for Allison and Eva. We did pretty good finding some very nice things for them. I even picked up a few things and got my shopping done. I’m going to take Eva to do the same thing next week. while we were out we also had lunch at McDonald’s. There is a new promotion happening with Adult sized Happy Meals. Great idea for that nostalgia factor but they went and collaborated with some DJ and turned their McNugget buddies into characters associated with this dj instead of the old Mcnugget buddy figures that I think most people would have preferred. I know that I would. I tend to like many things and give so many things a chance. This I was not that thrilled about. I’m not enjoying these collaborations. One collaboration that I do like, however, is that between G.I. JOE and Transformers. Hasbro took the character of Soundwave and reimagined him as the D...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01804 At this time of year Allison receives all sorts of gifts and treats from the kids at her school. The parents have been very generous over the years. Today she came home with a big box of cookies from Hatchville Baking Company. They can be found in Mashpee Commons. Twelve individually wrapped tasty treats. I had a sugar cookie and it was very good. Looking forward to sharing in whatever other fun treats are coming this way in the coming week.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01803 Our funny little Elf on the Shelf is up to his tricks again. Tomorrow morning andy will wake up to see that Fitzy has gone and messed around with the printer. We’ve set this up once in the past and I saw in my photo memories that we did this and since you have to figure out a new place every night for this dang elf to go I decided that this would be a fun one for Andy. We’re still not sure if Andy still believes in these things or not. We’re waiting for them to tell us. This very well may be Fitzy’s last year making the rounds around the house.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01802 Today Allison met her friend Michelle at Jordans in Avon and they spent the afternoon together. I spent the afternoon and all day sleeping. Got pretty good sleep today, too. While Allison was out she went to see the Enchanted Village there at Jordans, made a Costco and IKEa run as well. She brought back some blueberry muffins for us, too. I’m looking forward to having them tomorrow morning.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01801 This afternoon we went to see Peter and the Starcatcher at Feehan. Eva has been working on the play for months now and there has already been 2 performances with the last two of them being today. We went to the early show because I had to work tonight and also it makes it easier for others to come and see the show. Mom and Dad came down from the Cape and Shelby and Kylie came as well. Our Aunt Donna also joined us at the show. The show as a little different with people seated on the stage and the actors acted around and with everyone. I’ve never been a part of something like that. It was also interesting to be back on that stage for a performance. Eva’s good friend, Elizabeth was in the show and she did a phenomenal job. She had so many lines that were like crazy tongue twisters and she nailed each of them so well. We caught Eva after the show and before the final performance. She’s really enjoyed being a part of the theater this year and is looking forward...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01800 I had seen an advertisement on facebook for an advent dice calendar and thought that it would be a great advent calendar for Eva. so I bought one and well, it arrived 8 days into December. Not great but not terrible either. Looks like Eva has gone and opened a few of the windows already. I also picked one up for her friend Steven. Steven is the dungeon master for Eva’s weekly Dungeons and Dragons game. Although they have not played in months. also picked up a LEGO friends advent calendar for Andy because Andy said that they wanted an Advent calendar this year. Getting one 8 days into December means slim pickins. It is much better than the one I got them 2 years ago from 5 Below. That was simply garbage. At least with the LEGO friends one Andy gets some cute LEGO animals for their collection.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01799 The other day I got a new case for my phone. My old case cracked so much that parts of it fell off. I don’t think I’ve kept a phone long enough before that it actually outlived the case. My phone just got paid off so it is 2 years old at this point. It still is in great shape so I’m not upgrading anything yet. But, in order to keep it in good shape I picked up a new case. I also got a new wire for the car because Android Auto was not working consistently and I think it was the connections between the phone and wire in the car. The new wire is making things work so much better. On the phone front I ordered a case and screen protector for Andy’s new phone but it has not arrived yet. It is late along with a coupe other things from Amazon. Not sure why those particular things ended up late but here we are. I have not let Andy take the phone to school yet because it needs a case and screen protector first. I may see if I can get a cheap on at Best buy so that An...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01798 Tonight was Andy’s first band concert. This year Andy decided that they would like to learn to play the trombone. We bought Andy one and they’ve been enjoying it. Band is one of their favorite classes and I am happy that there is a band class for Andy. There seems to be a lot of things that Andy has access to at this new school that Andy never had before. With this being the first band concert there was also a learning curve for us, namely to get there very early to get a seat. I took Andy to rock climbing and then directly from rock climbing to the concert. When we arrived it was already packed. This was my view of the concert. We all stood in the hallway and could only get into the room after 5,6,7 & 8th grade bands were done and it was just the chorus doing their show. Mom came up to see Andy’s concert but like us, she did not actually get to see Andy play. I’d been looking forward to this and will know for next time. There were way more people here ...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01797 Tonight I was playing some video games and I smelled smoke in the house. I rushed downstairs and Eva was sitting on the kitchen island and there was a haze of smoke all around. She was simply looking at her phone sending emails all the while there is thick smoke around her. Allison had asked her to watch the rice and turn it down once it boiled. Well, the pot above was the result. I know that Allison is very thankful that she has not opened her brand new set of pots and pans that she got for her birthday. That would have been very bad.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01796 Andy has been rewatching Voltron Legendary Defender and is playing more and more with their LEGO bricks. Today Andy decided to make a Voltron out of LEGO bricks. I think that they did a really nice job of it, too. This was a quickly put together thing but still looks cool. Over the weekend we cleaned up some of the toys int he living room. We actually removed all of them some we packed away like the Ninja Turtles and Hot Wheels but others we sent off to Savers. We had four Voltron toys and Andy packed them up to give to their friend Dasia. Of course I wasn’t thinking and the toys were two play swords and two play masks. Dasia’s mom had to come and pick up the gift because they were toy weapons. Completely harmless and clearly fantasy toys but still weapons. I’ll have to apologize to her when I see her next.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01795 today we continued with Christmas traditions and we watched some cheesy Christmas movies and put up the Christmas tree. We have only done the indoor one so far but soon we will get front porch tree up as well. Last year I picked up a set of 600 LED lights. I had bought some white lights last year and they were just too bright and white. So, I ordered a string of other lights that can be changed to so many different colors. The nice thing about these lights is that it can do soft yellow light. The bad thing is that when you blink you see red and green from the lights. But, it does tend to grown on you the more you look at it. Tonight we watched the movie Family Switch and both kids seemed to really enjoy the movie. The movie we watched as we put lights on the tree was called Best Christmas Ever which gave Eva plenty of time to make all sorts of snarky comments through the movie. She’s quite funny when she wants to be. One of our other traditions is to get th...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01794 I took the weekend off so that we could get some Christmas traditions done together as a family. Eva had to be at school on Saturday and Sunday to prepare for the upcoming play next weekend. We had the evenings to do those things that we’d been trying to get done. Things like visits to La Salette, trimming the tree and more. Before we went to La Salette we had a few other things to do. Last night I went to ABD and picked up a new dragon for Andy. One of the guys that I had earned my black belt with saw my post about andy’s birthday dragon and his son decided to make Andy another one on his 3D printer. It was incredibly nice for this kid to do and he’d never met Andy before either. Later on Andy and I went to see the movie Merry Little Batman at the theater in Dedham. We had free passes as well as free drinks and popcorn to enjoy while watching this cute animated story that takes place at Christmas. It was a story about batman and his son, Damian. Andy and I enjoy...