BenSpark Family Adventures

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02181 Today began or trip to Florida for my cousin’s wedding reception at Disney as well as a few days of visiting with Allison’s parents. Two years ago the family went to Florida for the Christmas holiday and we had a heck of an adventure coming back because we had to drive home, unexpectedly and unplanned. Southwest had cancelled a ton of flights including ours. Well, because of that we had some credits on Southwest and so when making pans for this trip we were able to use those as well as a SouthWest credit card to get our flights there and back for the whole family for under $500, total. I had to pick some pretty wacky and somewhat inconvenient flight times but we were able to do it. We landed in Orlando a bit after 10pm and were able to get to Allison’s parents’ place before the ball dropped for the New Year. Now we have about a week in somewhat warmer weather than home.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02180 Tonight we went to La Salette to see the lights. I had received message from a friend of mine from college, Patrick Tully. He asked what there was around La Salette for places to eat. I gave him suggestions and realized that we had talked about going to La Salette tonight as a family. We hadn’t made it there so far in the Christmas season and this was the last chance so we headed over to see the lighting of the place and then walked around to see all the sights. I thought we could catch up with my friend, but unfortunately they were not going to arrive until an hour after we’d be done our trip. After our visit to La Salette we had dinner over at Bliss. It was one of the warmest visits we’ve ever had to La Salette and the least crowded. Even the Nativity set museum was way less crowded than in the past. The displays are done so much nicer now, too.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02179 Eva worked 52 hours ont he embroidery of her costume. She showed it to us today. This is for a character that is one of her favorites and she has been working very hard to get this costume completed. She has a second costume like this one with tons of embroidery to do but that one is not yet complete.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02178 Today the boys had one adventure while the girls had another. I learned that I had a full day of Personal Time that I had to take or lose by the end of the year so I picked a day where there wasn’t much happening at night at work. We’re still short a person and one other person was going to be out for the weekend. That would leave only two people on and I don’t like taking time when there is a downtime to manage. But, it worked out that nothing was happening so I booked the tickets to aht andy and I could go to Brick Fest Live in Worcester. Brick Fest Live is a LEGO show where people come with their LEGO creations both amature and professional. There are also a bunch of LEGO themed activities to do. I had gone to Philly Brick Fest several years ago when I was doing a LEGO themed YouTube show. That event was really good and I had expected the same sort of thing from today’s show. Today’s show paled in comparison. It was very small and there wasn’t a whole lo...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02177 I took my walk this morning because today we were heading home around noon so that I could work tonight. I decided to go the opposite direction of where I had gone the other days and instead of heading to Great Bay first I headed to the Falmouth Harbor. The water was very calm this morning. I was able to catch one of the boats heading out of the harbor as I came down the hill. I then walked up and around the Falmouth Plaza that now has an Aldis. I walked through the Aldis since I had never been in one before. There were some treats that I was very interested in picking up on a future trip. I then walked behind Walmart over to Marivista and back to the house. In the later morning andy and I helped dad put a bunch of things away for the Winter. We loaded up the outside shower with tables and chairs and then his tires into the Van. We drove home and I took a nap to get ready for work because I was working tonight but off tomorrow.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02176 On the day after Christmas my sister Shelby and her family arrived on the Cape. We opened gifts and enjoyed lunch in the morning and early afternoon. I went on another long walk around the area to get those 10,000 steps in. We’d do some more steps when we went over to Cape Cod Lanes for an afternoon of bowling. Bowling with the whole family was a lot of fun. We had two lanes and enjoyed the mild competition. Everyone had fun playing. Mom and Dad came a little later and watched. I’m glad that we caught our server and asked her to take a photo of all of us together, too. When we arrived back home we hung out and had some pizza for dinner. No movie tonight, just a lot of time on the sun porch. The cousins stayed overnight with Andy and with Eva. Eva wasn’t super thrilled to be sharing her space with her energetic cousin but she made do and they eventually went to sleep. We had a very good day all together.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02175 Today was Christmas. We woke up and had our cinnamon rolls for breakfast while we opened our stockings. Stockings were rather light this time around because neither Allison nor I thought much beyond what to put in the kids’ stockings. We overdid it with the the kids, but for us, not so much. I even commandeered some of the kids items for our stockings so they wouldn’t be so bare. That is okay because there were some big deal things coming. Overall the presents were fewer to open but more to experience this year. We’re going to Disney and two days in the parks is a pretty big gift. We also are going to a couple of comedy shows in the coming year. Allison and I are going to see Nate Bargatze in August and the whole family is going to see Josh Johnson in March. Needless to say budgets for gifts went out the window. This will be the kids’ first live comedy show. They enjoy Josh’s comedy on Tik Tok and so do we so we’re very excited to see him live. After we had...