BenSpark Family Adventures

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00851 Tonight Andy was helping one of his friends create a Spider-Man in clay. His friend wanted to make the Spider-Man for her father who was coming home for the first time in several months. I noticed how well Andy does at explaining how to do simple steps. He’s also very patient with his friends, very much like he was with his cousins a couple weeks back. In addition to his Spider-Man he also made a little gingerbread house and a fox. He’s got a lot of talent for making things out of clay. Way more than I would.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00850 I backed a Kickstarter for a band called Rock Sugar. They make some great music by making mashups of rock and roll and pop. They made an album called Reimaginator back in 2010. It has been ten years and their latest album is Reinventinator with 13 new songs. I can’t even tell you how many songs they wove together in each son, there are so many. I keep hearing something new with every listen. The album coins look incredible. Today was Stripe test for all of us at Karate and Krav. I managed to capture one photo of Eva while she was doing her test. She is fierce.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00849 As I have been cleaning out the office and garage and basement and attic I have been finding things that I packed up when I moved my office from one side of the house to the other. In one of the boxes there were some items that I could put up on the walls but also some of my collection of Wheeljack Transformers figures. That is my favorite character so I try and make sure that I pick up any of the figures that I can find. There is a Masterpiece version out there but that may prove to be a little too expensive to get.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00848 I’ve got to make some room in my garage for a training dummy. I purchased the BAS Body Action system and need space to set it up. So, I am going to take some things from the garage and put them in the attic and the basement so that I have enough room to use to work out. I’m also going to finally set up the water barrels. I placed an order for the water diverters to complete the setup.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00847 It is National Pretzel Day and instead of a giant soft pretzel I went with the pretzel rods today. I usually pick up a tub of Utz Pretzel rods for snacking at work but the kids discovered them and they like them as well. I’ve discovered that I enjoy them a lot with the Onion and Chive Philly Cream Cheese. Not sure how I discovered that. I think one time I was looking for a dip and there wasn’t anything that I really liked so I tried the cream cheese and it was very good. It is also very good on salt bagels from Tasty’s. Maybe that is because they are like soft pretzels in their own right.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00846 Not another birthday cake but Andy wanted to make a cake to enjoy with Mimi and Dano. He baked it the other day and decorated it. He was so excited to serve it to everyone tonight. We hung around home today. Had Chinese food, watched Spider-Man Homecoming, which Eva swears she never saw, but she did see it and then had some cake after the movie. It was a nice sendoff day to Mimi and Dano.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00845 Today was a full day. It started off with a seminar at the Karate school. This was a special seminar with John Whitman. He showed us long gun defense and it was a really great seminar. When it was over he hung around a bit and we were able to get some photos taken together. Tonight we went to Roger Williams Park Zoo for the Asian Lantern Spectacular. This was a really nice event where we walked all around the zoo and were able to see huge lanterns that looked like animals. We got in at 5:30 so it wasn’t that dark, but once it got dark it really was incredible. I made a daily vlog about it.