BenSpark Family Adventures

We received a free copy of Chicken War™ the Strategic Guessing Game from Think Fun to play with and Review. Opinions are our own. We’ve always been a family that enjoys playing board games. Now with the whole family home every day during the quarantine/isolation we have been playing a lot more. Thankfully Think Fun has supplied us with a new game to help pass the time and frustrate me to no end. Let me explain. Chicken War™ is a strategic guessing game where you battle other players to see if you can assemble a chicken army before the other players can guess your chicken leader. But there is a catch, there is always a catch. In order to have a full chicken army every one of the recruits has to share 2 and only two traits with the leader. I played this with Andrew and over and over again I thought I had everything right only to find that one of the recruits shared 3 things in common. When that happens you have to pick a new leader and then start assembling the army once again. I think t...

I seriously do not think that I am ready to say goodbye to She-Ra when the final season drops on May 15th. This has been a fantastic series to watch with the kids. It bridges the gap between the shows that I watched as a kid and modern shows of today. This series has been incredible and has been such a joy to watch. I got some goosebumps while watching the trailer for this season. The song is AJ Michalka’s cover of She-Ra theme song “Warriors”. There will even be a full series soundtrack available May 8.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00486 Back on April 17th Jakks Pacific sent me a HUGE box of The Last Kids on Earth toys for free. I could play with them and review them as I wished. Opinions are my own and these are fun toys. I know that they are fun toys because I got a kick out of them, Andy played for hours with them and continues to do so and the toys are very show accurate. It makes a big difference when care is taken to make the figures look like they do in the show. I do wish, however that there were larger figures of the kids. More like 3.5 inch Action Figures or larger. The size they are is great for imaginative play and use with the monsters and the playset. I guess if you want to have the right scale then if you make the kids bigger the monsters would be huge. The monsters have great detail and action areas. Each one has a weak spot so that they can be knocked over with a disk shooter. The different disk shooters are a hoot. They also take into consideration the show. Each disk has a feat...

We received a copy of Water Game from Adventerra Games for free to play and review. Opinions are our own. Being cooped up at home with the family has been a good way for us to spend time together. We also welcome distractions and play so when I was asked if we wanted to check out Adventerra Games’ new board game called Water Game I was, well, game. In Water Game each player is not only trying to win on their own but each player has to have a minimum number of gallons of water or everyone loses. It a cross between a competitive and cooperative game. The kids and I sat down to play. I read the directions which were very simple overall. It was simply four pages of information r rather one page folded in half. So, the instructions were very quick and straightforward. You don’t even know how many times just reading the directions of a game put the kids off wanting to play. However, we were able to jump right in. Each player gets a little fish character to use to swim downriver. They also ha...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00485 I helped my dad today. He called me last night and asked if I would help him put in some windows at a house he was working on. He’s replaced all the windows in this house over the years and was on the last two. We did uphold social distancing as the window was 7 feet wide and we each had to hold onto one end. Then when the window was in we were separated by the glass, plus our masks. It was good to see my dad outside of a zoom window. Our family has been having zoom sessions once a week and while they are great and nice to see everyone I’d much rather be able to see everyone in person. I don’t know when it will be safe to gather once more. I don’t put that much faith in early loosening of restrictions. We’ve got masks though and do the hand washing so at least there is that and that is more than so many other people are doing. Earlier this week I went to the supermarket to get groceries. I only do this once a week, alone and masked. I see so many people who do no...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00484 Today is National Superhero Day. Allison has been making masks and she found some great material that have the Marvel superheroes on it. She made this one for me that has Iron Man showing quite prominently. I wore it for the better part of the morning. First thing I did was take Andy over to America’s Best Defense because we could pick up our new belts. We both earned our green belts and also our first stripes on those belts. We continue to take classes every Monday and Wednesday via Zoom. I brought Andy back to the house and then went out again to the Post Office and then Stop & Shop. It is hard being out and about. Things needed to get done. Groceries needed to be picked up and masks needed to be mailed out. I could not believe how many people were not wearing anything over their mouths and noses or if they were wearing masks the masks were not completely covering their mouths and noses. Not very effective. I’ve been thinking on national superhero day and h...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00483 While we are homebound during the quarantine there are some things that we have been doing to pass the time. The kids have been doing some silly food stuff. They have been taking turns picking foods for each other to eat while blindfolded. For the most part I think it is another way to sneak in more snacks. They have been pretty nice to each other doing this although Andy did give Eva some cauliflower crackers to try. They are the size and shape of Cheez-Its but they are definitely NOT Cheez-Its. Such an aftertaste! I don’t think we’ve falen quite far enough from decent snacks to choose those if not blindfolded. It took a global pandemic but Eva has found that her personal workspace in the house was not cutting it with so much clutter. She has begun to take some really good steps toward having an organized and clean workspace. We have not even been harping on her about it. During April vacation we started working on an escape puzzle. The puzzle was called The Cur...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00482 After dinner Andy made us sundaes. Then he made his own. He is of the persuasion that you can never have enough toppings. Needless to say he had a double brushing tonight.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00481 I have some homework ahead of me this week. Andy and I have been reading Max Brallier’s The Last Kids on Earth books together. I think that this is one that Andy won’t read on it’s own because he might be a little scared but if I read it with him he is brave. We’ve been watching the Netflix series based on these books (done very well indeed) and he’s been enjoying that. We also have to work on a video of us unboxing the toys from the show, too. But my main homework is to read all of the books and soon. I want to be totally up on all things that have to do with these kids and their adventures. There may just be a very important reason for why I have to do this soon.

We received a digital download code for the game Gigantosaurus The Game from Outright Games as part of my participation in a Twitter Party today at 11am. Opinions are my own. I am always on the lookout for new fun games for my kids. Andy and Eva has been playing more video games lately and that’s great. I love that they are bonding over several games. I was able to get chosen to participate in a Twitter party for Gigantosaurus The Game and with it came a download code of the whole game that the kids could play on the Nintendo Switch. The game has two major parts to it. There is the adventure portion of the game and there is the racing portion of the game. The racing game has pretty simple controls but a fun experience. AS you zip along the track you have to collect objects and avoid obstacles. Meanwhile much larger dinos are walking around and through the course. You have to be quick as you steer aredound their giant feet. In the adventure portion of the game you can switch between the...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00480 Earlier this week the kids and I set up their very special crystal growing set. We mixed the solutions, poured in the crystal seeds and now we wait. We put the crystal growing baths up above the mantle because no one can accidentally knock them over and neither can the cats. The only way to get to them is with a step stool. The crystals grow in the solution uncovered and that is another reason having them up way high is a good idea. Small fingers and curious kids do not make for patience. As the crystals grow there is a danger that they will grow out of their containers. That is what we are seeing here. To prevent that or to help control it there are some paper disks to put on top of the open containers. That way the crystals will grow onto those pieces of paper instead of growing over the sides and onto the top of the mantle. I took today’s photo before I knocked these pieces off and back into the solution. Not sure if I should have put it back in but figured wh...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00479 I received a copy of the Escape Puzzle: The Curse of the Wolves from Ravensburger to try out and review. Opinions are my own.Each April vacation we try and keep things low key. When I was at Toy Fair this year I knew that we would be heading to upstate New York to a quiet AirBNB to spend quality family time. That turned into the whole Coronavirus quarantine and we ended up having to cancel that trip but we spent plenty of quality family time together. Luckily we still had the puzzle that we would be working on together. I noticed the Escape Puzzle called The Curse of the Wolves at the Ravensburger booth and it was something I had never heard of or seen before. You solve the puzzle but you also have to figure out how to escape from the tricky situation that you find yourself in from the puzzle. In this case you stumble upon five wolves in the forest. What do you do to escape. What makes this 759 piece puzzle tricky is that what you see on the front of the box is n...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00478 Here at the house we are getting so much use out of Allison’s grandmother’s sewing machine. Allison is making mask after mask and Eva is experimenting with different projects. Today she got started on creating a skirt. She had some old linen curtains that we no longer were using and so she used that as her “rough draft” of her first skirt. After that she moved on to some better fabric to make a more refined skirt. I think she was doing pretty well right out of the gate.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00477 If you are a reader of my daughter’s blog (for family and friends only) she has gone over much of what I am going to write about today. Eva has been keeping a daily blog called Quarantine Daily and a larger weekly post called, you guesses it, Quarantine Weekly. She started this all on her own for friend and family. Today’s post from her covered pretty much everything I am going to cover here. We are on School Vacation Week this week and as such the kids have had some big plans. They have wanted to make a blanket fort in the living room for such a long time. Today they got to do so. They hung out in that almost all da with frequent stops to do other things. We started growing some crystals, Eva sewed a skirt from a pattern that she found online. Both Allison and Eva have been getting tons of mileage out of Grandma Eva’s singer sewing machine. Allison have been cranking out all sorts of masks for people. She’s bought a ton of material and is making many many masks....

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00476 I received a free review copy of Pets and Their Famous Humans by Ana Gallo and illustrated by Katherine Quinn. Opinions are my own. When asked if I would like a complimentary copy of Pets and Their Famous Humans I thought about my son Andy. He wants to take care of animals when he grows up and I want him to read more. He loves his pet cat, Torrun, and so I figured that this would be a great book for him to read to learn about other people and their pets. I didn’t realize how much I would learn as well. I had Andy go through the book and pick out a few pet names that sounded interesting to him and he would read those pages. Then we would go over them together and I would ask him questions. We learned about the famous cats of Ernest Hemingway. I’d say that his cats are pretty famous in their own right at this point and many people have heard about his home in Key West Florida where the descendants of his cats live. But there was so much more to learn. Did you know ...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00475 Yesterday we woke up to a bunch of snow on the cars and on the trees. I was worried that we would not have these flowers after the snow had melted. However, they stayed on the tree and they look so pretty. If we would only have some nice days, or if only I was awake during the nice part of these days. My daughter has started her own blog for the family. She’s been updating all the things that she has been during in the quarantine. She set it all up herself through Google Sites. I am thinking that we might set up a Blogger blog for her in the future or as I had suggested to her already adding her blogs to this site. I could create a user for her and a section just for her to write in her blog updates.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00474 Each Saturday I have to still go to the office to run the physical switchboard. I’m the only one in the building except for one operations guy who is on the completely opposite side of the building. When I arrive and pull into the parking garage I am the only car there. So, never any trouble getting a spot. It is a bit strange being in a building all by myself. Although, I am only able to go into one small space of the building. Bathroom, Desk and Vending machine area. The rest of the building is shut down as it was cleaned. All of the other buildings that we have are closed down while everyone works from home. I go in because they still want someone to watch over the switchboard. I got pretty good sleep today. We had pre-ordered a half dozen donuts from Confectionery Designs and Allison and the kids picked them up. They have an interesting way in which to pick up the donuts. You arrive, park in front of a chair with a number on it. Then you call inside the build...