BenSpark Family Adventures

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01096 We spent the last day of 2021 playing games, eating and enjoying each other’s company. In between playing on Andy’s new Oculus Quest VR we played some additional games together. We started out playing some Fortnite together. I picked up the Axolotl skin for Andy so he could play as that one. He even wore his Halloween costume to play. After that we broke out the Marvel Battle Stones game from Funko. This game uses a bunch of mini characters as play pieces and there are cards that are the battles. Rolling dice and using strategy are the best ways to play this game. We have a bunch of the add-ons and extras, too. I found some of the series two packs at Big Lots and so I picked them up before Christmas. We opened up a bunch of new characters. For New Year’s Eve we usually do a big meal of appetizers and things to pick on. This usually means checking through the freezer in the basement for whatever we might have down there. We were pretty much out of stock but ...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01095 The other day I was in the attic and moving some things around and I found an unopened Marvel Collector Corps box with some Funko Pop figures inside. I also checked on a large Star Wars box that I had that contained about 11 Funko Star Wars Pop figures inside that I had not taken out of their boxes, or at least I had kept their boxes. I used to take them out of the boxes and throw away the boxes because there was no place to store/display them all. Now that I am using Command Strips to affix them to the walls I am going to add these to the wall collection. Still not sure what to do with all the loose ones. Still no where to display them.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01094 Tonight we tried a new place for dinner. I took the family to The Broaster House in Woonsocket. I had heard about it from a guy at the dojo. He talked about it a few times and I figured that we’d try it out. The Broaster House does a family style meal with salad, fries, rolls, pasta and sauce and broasted chicken. We’ve done the family style chicken dinner at Wrights Farm and that is pretty good but I wanted to try broasted instead of baked chicken this time out. It was pretty good but bland. the only thing that had a halfway decent taste was the salad because of the dressing. Adding some salt and pepper helped bring out some more flavor but it could have been better with much better sauce on the pasta. Andy got the Oculus Quest 2 VR for Christmas. He is having a super fun time with a game called Job Simulator. We also picked up Beat Saber and he’s loving trying that one but it can be very challenging. Eva is very skilled with that game.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01093 Santa brought Andy a radio controlled car. This one is crazy. It not only has the four wheels but it can raise and lower. It also has ten rollers on each wheel so that you can drift. I would like to see it faster but it is fun to drive around. Makes me want to pick up a much faster car to drive around this Summer. Andy does enjoy having fun with the car, though. We’ll have to get it to a nice place where he can test out all the features.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01092 My sister Shelby got me this new mug for Christmas. It is a giant mug and perfect for Winter hot chocolate. I can use it to enjoy hot chocolate with some Girl Scout cookies that we bought from my niece, Kylie.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01091 We arrived on Cape Cod yesterday afternoon and had a really nice day. Today we were joined by my sister, Shelby and her family. The kids were so excited to see their cousins and play with them. Everyone hung out on the sunporch and we opened gifts in a much less frenzied fashion then past years. I actually got to see pretty much all the gifts that the kids opened. I was excited to see what Dylan thought of his gift. He really liked a remote control car that I had at the Cape last summer but it broke so we got him one of his own. We had fun driving it around the street and yards after we opened gifts. My Uncle Jim came to the house later on and he took the photo above of the whole family. We haven’t had one of those in a while. It was nice to capture one of everyone together in the same place. Later on we had pizza for dinner and then watched the movie 8-bit Christmas. I think the kids liked it. My parents did. I also captured the above photo of my Dad’s lights. H...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01090 Christmas arrived today and we enjoyed a nice morning at home with the kids. We started off with some amazing cinnamon rolls that Allison made. Her best in years. She learned the secret of leaving them out over night so that they puff up to be huge and fluffy. The kids enjoyed giving us the gifts that they had gotten from the Christmas Shop at school and we enjoyed seeing them enjoying the gifts that they received from us and from Santa. We decided a little after the Summer ended that this year we would get one big present for everyone in the family and that would be an inflatable paddle board. So, during October and November we received 4 of them from Amazon and I put them into the garage. We picked out different designs and each one game in the same cardboard box so it wasn’t until I opened each one today that we were able to select which paddle board each person would get. Instead of wrapping these giant boxes we covered the stack of them with a blanket ...