BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00517 We cannot pick up our weekly grocery order until tomorrow so instead we decided to try curbside pick up at Mac and Walt’s. We love their burgers and were interested to see their curbside setup. Mac and Walt’s knows how to do curbside really well. They have all of their parking spots numbered and at each spot there is a sign that tells you the number to call upon arrival. I called, let them know that I would pop the trunk and the food was out and ready within two minutes. I was off and back home in less than 10 minutes, that means hot fries. I got the bacon cheeseburger and Allison the Walt burger. The kids got sliders and we split some fries and onion rings. We also split some of the desserts. Mac and Walt’s partners with a local bakery called Flaky Crust Pies and they put up on Instagram that tonight they were carrying a mixed berry crumble. We got that and an apple pie slice and a cream cheese brownie. It was all delicious. It was also nice to eat in the back y...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00516 I did not go for donuts yesterday for Donut Fridays with the family. I didn’t go because someone in the house decided that he was having a bowl of Nutella, fluff and peanuts for breakfast. So, I did not go for donuts yesterday morning. I went this morning to surprise Allison with a coffee and the kids with donuts. Our local Honey Dew was open for walk ins and so I went in to see what they had and they had these very cute smiley face donuts. I figured that with everything happening in the world right now we need a smile. I tried to sleep and made it till about 1:30pm. Then I was up. I went to Twitter and took a look to see if things were on track for the Space X Crew Dragon launch that had been rescheduled from earlier this week. It looked like a go so I tried to get back to sleep but ended up staying awake. So, we watched the launch all together in our bed. I held my breath watching because of memories of the Challenger and Columbia. I didn’t want to see anything...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00515 I’ve spent most of this past week cleaning up my office and moving many things up and into the attic. I have to get the room down to a few items so that I can paint the room for Andy. He’s going to have the office as his bedroom soon. The office is bigger than his current bedroom which was good for a baby but too small for a growing boy. We’ve been trying to decide upon colors for the rooms. I simply want something that is neutral because of the filming that I’ll be doing. I don’t want the colors of the walls to influence the colors on the videos. The swatch that I have on my wall has the official color for the New England Patriots. I may even go with that color because the room is smaller and darker so whatever I paint in that room will be darker. So, I will probably go with the pewter. Andy has a few paint swatches in his room. He’s leaning towards a red but we also have a blue option. Once he picks the color I’ll finish cleaning the office and then paint it. T...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00514 About a month ago we started a set of gems in our rock tumbler. This was our very first set of rocks and gems to try out. We picked up this National Geographic rock tumbler because the kids have a ton of rocks and gems from events. Every year my company picnic has a rock mining area and the kids have ton of those rocks from that. They also have some from going to Great Wolf Lodge. This past week when we were on the Cape I had each of the kids pick out three rocks that they liked and I will tumble them for the next month. Then when we return tot eh Cape we will bring the tumbled rocks and reveal them to the cousins. I think Eva will give a geology lesson for our home school Summer Science school.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00513 I was offered my own Celestial Buddy for free to check out and review. I choose Mars because that is where I hope to see us go next. It has been an out of this world ride for one plush little Earth from Celestial Buddies. Back in March a plush Earth toy from Celestial Buddies was launched with Crew Dragon to the International Space Station. It quickly captured the hearts and minds of children everywhere and also those young at heart. Now, Little Earth is coming home with the crew on today’s launch. Full details of the journey are in the press release below. We will watch the live feed of the launch with the kids in a couple of hours and I truly hope that they will feel a sense of wonder at the possibilities by watching this historic launch. This is the first time a space ship will launch Americans into Space from America. The next step would be to go back to The Moon but ultimately a journey to Mars. So that is why I choose the Mars Celestial Buddy, that and Arie...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00512 Andy’s hair has gotten super long during the quarantine and he’s been asking for a mohawk. I started out trying to give him one and ended up in my office wanting to be left alone by everyone. When I was a kid Mr. Manzaro would give all of the boys a whiffle. That was a complete buzz cut with the clippers. He’d line us up bing, bang boom and we were all done. Then the dog got his turn. He had some major clippers. I was using the small clippers that I have for small personal grooming like my beard and sideburns, when I used to have them. The clippers aren’t really for the whole head but there was enough of a charge to do Andy’s head. Besides, I tried to find an actual clipper set and that was as scare as toilet paper.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00511 We received a copy of Korner’d from Endless Games for free. Opinions of the game are our own. Endless Games has recently launches a new puzzle game called Korner’d. This is a two sided game board with 36 tiles that have four colors or animals on them, one in each corner of the time. The game board is a large grid covered in colors on one side and animals on the other. Your goal is to match your tiles to spaces on the board. Each tile can only match one specific spot on the board. There are several ways that you can play this. Traditional is that each player gets 3 tiles and the first one to place all of their tiles correctly wins. You can also race to see who can get all 36 tiles placed the quickest. We also made up other rules like giving me 9 tiles to do when everyone else got 6. I found that I picked this game up very quickly and could match things really well. We played with my mom, my dad and Eva. Andy began to pick the game up better the second time that we...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00510 We decided last minute to all go down to Cape Cod to visit my parents for Sunday and Monday of Memorial Day Weekend. For the entire quarantine time so far we have only been able to see everyone via Zoom. A couple of times my mom and dad came by to drop things off but we maintained the proper distancing. We’ve been holed up at home, they’ve been as well. So we went down for a visit. My sister, Shelby and her kids also went to the Cape. They have a place of their own. They would come over during the day and the kids got to go play on the beach with their cousins. The beach was pretty empty so we were plenty far enough away from other people. Eva buried Kylie and made her into a mermaid. I asked each of the kids to pick up 3 special rocks because I am going to put them into the rock tumbler. I figure that I’d get it started now and it would be all ready for a reveal around the 4th of July when we return to the Cape. Each of the kids found a couple of special rocks a...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00509 Spin Master sent me a Limited Edition Stan Lee Etch-A-Sketch to check out and review. Opinions are my own. The Etch-A-Sketch is celebrating 60 years of magic. The Magic screen of the Etch-A-Sketch is a thing of wonder for kids young and young at heart alike. The great thing about an Etch-A-Sketch is anyone can pick it up and immediately start creating and having fun. There is a fantastic tactile feel to this toy. I remember playing with one as a kid and trying to create mazes and then try to go through the mazes. I couldn’t even imagine the amazingly creative works of art that people could make on an Etch-A-Sketch. To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Etch-A-Sketch there have been a few Limited Editions commissioned including a Rubik’s Cube, Monopoly, NASA and a Diamond Edition. The one that I was most excited to hear about was the Stan Lee version. This Limited Edition Etch-A-Sketch has fun cartoon images of Stan Lee on the outside of the frame. The knobs ha...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00508 Tonight was the first really warm night of the year. We put a fan in Andy’s window. It is a bit too early to haul up the air conditioners but I suspect that before June they will be going into the windows. I may even have to get an additional one for the office seeing as I am working from home for the foreseeable future. A little after Andy went to sleep he got up complaining that he was to hot. When he learned that Allison was out in the back yard with our friend Colleen he put on his Spider Man pajamas and went downstairs. He went back up and ended up moving himself to the top of the covers with his head at the bottom of the bed so he was getting more fan on himself. But he fell asleep wearing the pajamas.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00507 A few factors came together to influence my decision to purchase a giant screen for the back yard. First and foremost is that the terrible neighbors that lived next door and who would should obscenities at all hours have been removed. I am hopeful to see who moves in after that building has been completely renovated. A whole lot of work has been going on there. It is quality work and I hope that quality people move in. The other factor is that we’re going to be home a lot more often because of the pandemic and there are no open movie theaters. I bought the screen from Amazon.com and while it was a bit pricey it goes up and comes down very easily and the picture looks great. I was even able to get everything back into the bag when all was said and done. The screen is 120 inches and it the screen snaps to a large light frame. There re ropes to tie it down in case of wind, which we had but it stayed up. In order to play our entertainment we used our Cinemood, a smal...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00506 We received an advanced copy of Space Battle Lunchtime the game and the first comic book for free so that we could read the comic, play the game and review it for you. Opinions are our own.My kids love cooking competition shows. They love to bake and experiment. They also enjoy funny comics and silly space creatures. Therefore Space Battle Lunchtime was right on time for the kids and I to enjoy a new game. In the game you battle as one of the chefs on a space cooking show. This closely follows the comic book where a young woman, Peony, is recruited to be a contestant on the show. She is from Earth and must learn how to cook amazing dishes with crazy foods that she’s never seen before. She uses her skills and gets a little help from the tv crew to make it through to the finals of the competition. In the game you take on the role of one of the cooks in the battle. You must create dishes for the judges and depending upon how accurately you can match the flavors to t...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00505 I must admit this off the bat. I received this Fly Wheels box well before Toy Fair in February. I am so overdue on doing anything with these that it is laughable. Jakks Pacific sent me this amazing influencer box of Fly Wheels toys and we are just getting out there to use them. They sent a box of Fly Wheels plus a jump. Today Andy and I went to the Park and used an empty baseball field to zoom these flywheels all around. We had a fun time doing so, too. Fly Wheels are wheels that you attach to a handle, pull a rip cord and let fly. They have so many different kinds for different types of performance like Street, Off-Road, Race and Moto. The wheels can go up to 200 (scale) MPH and we certainly noticed when we pulled the cord and the wheel hit the ground shooting up rocks and sand. Occasionally we’d even hit the jump right and the flywheels would rocket up and over. They’ve even gotten one of these to jump 30 feet in the air over an actual airliner. Amazing!

Jakks Pacific sent us a demo unit of their ReDo Skateboard line for free as part of a Twitter Party that I am a co-host for on Thursday. Opinions are my own. The kids have been very curious about skateboards ever since my sister gave them her old board. Andy also has a skateboard that converts to a scooter and back. But they have never seen a skateboard as nice as this one from ReDo. From deck to trucks to wheels this thing is beautiful. I don’t say that lightly either as I am not much of a skateboard fan as I was when I was a kid. My old board is kicking around somewhere on the Cape right now. I am pretty sure it is showing all of its 30 years of wear and tear, too. This ReDo board is really nice, however. It has a great color scheme and great hardware. It is a Popsicle skateboard made from 7ply thin hard NE maple, for beginner or advanced users. This thing has super fast ReDo Abec 5 speed bearings 5” ReDo Geo Lite trucks with hardened steel axle. It is made with a wider shape for inc...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00504 Andy and Allison had inspiration today. They ordered some gatorade and snacks from our pick up at Stop and Shop and set out a cooler. Inside were the snacks and the gatorades for the delivery drivers and postal workers that have been coming to our house. We’ve had deliveries pretty much every day with things like supplies for masks, food and more. Andy wanted to do something nice for the drivers and he and Allison came up with the idea. Andy then made a sign to put out with the snacks and drinks. He used his best phonics to spell out delivery. We also set out a pack of wipes.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00503 We’ve been doing deliveries from Imperfect Foods for a little while now. We don’t get to choose everything that comes in the box but whatever we get we try and use. This latest shipment came with some Purple Brussels Sprouts. Allison made them up with some Italian Sausages. Purple Brussels Sprouts are a bit milder than the regular green ones. I don’t get the weird Brussels Sprouts burps like I do wen I have the green ones. She roasted these up on the new grill and they came out really nice. Next time they go in the air fryer and get mixed with some of the bacon ends and pieces that we get from Imperfect foods, too.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00502 When I first got the World’s Smallest Optimus Prime from Super Impulse I knew that I wanted to ut it in the palm of the hand of one of my Other Optimus Prime figures. This one isn’t even my largest Optimus Prime. I have one of the Masterpiece Optimus Prime figures in the garage somewhere. I’ll have to dig that out at some point. I do like how cool this looks. Love the portrait feature of this phone. Makes things look so cool.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00501 While this is not necessarily a post sponsored by Warner Bros. Pictures I did receive some product plus free digital access to the movie. However, I had just purchased the movie an hour prior to the email letting me know that I had the movie. So I gave that one to my sister. We’ve been very excited to see SCOOB. Andy has seen the commercials over and over and he could not wait for the movie. I do not think that he’s seen much about Scooby Doo. Not like me, I grew up watching Scooby Doo and all the cartoons that are mentioned in the movie. There were so many fun Easter Eggs in the movie. I know that I may have missed some or not known exactly why they were Easter Eggs but I caught many of them. Since Scooby Doo was produced by Hanna-Barbera there were many Easter Eggs from other Hanna-Barbera cartoons and I loved seeing that. Scoob starts off telling the story of how Mystery, Inc formed, how Scooby and Shaggy became fast friends and their first cases. The story is...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00500 Andy and I went for a nice long walk today. He’s all about his Fitbit and counting how many steps he takes each day. He likes to let everyone know that he has taken the most steps. That is because he is in constant motion. Whether it is is feet or his mouth, one or both are always moving. During our walk he had both going at a constant clip. We walked from our house through the whole Riverwalk over to a small waterfall, as you can see above. This was a place that I explored as a kid when my dad owned a house in that area. We’d go over and clean up the apartments and mow the lawn and make repairs. When I got breaks I’d go and explore. I remember that waterfall being so much bigger as a kid. Taking walks with Andrew has been something I have tried to do the past few weeks because he’s got this pent up energy that he needs to release so he can focus on his work and also spend less time on the devices. He has a computer now (hand me down) but luckily, he’s only using...

This year at Toy Fair I got to see the Back To The Future playset up close. This is set 70317 that I received for free from Playmobil to play with and review. Opinions are my own. Back to the Future is one of my all time favorite movies. when I think of the best year of movies I think 1984-1985 and Back to the Future is definitely the top movie of that time period. Every time it is on TV I watch it. This is a movie that I can watch with my dad over and over again. There are not many movies that we share a deep love for but Back tot he Future is the top one. That is probably why I enjoy it so much. When I learned that Playmobil was going to be doing a playset based on Back to the Future I knew that they were going to do it right and I was correct. This set has such great attention to detail. Included is The Delorean time machine. It also has Marty and Doc Brown. Their outfits are spot on including the multiple watches that Doc Brown wears. The set even has the camcorder, Marty’s skatebo...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00499 While touring the Klutz booth at Toy Fair 2020 I noticed the Sew Your Own Donut Animals activity set. I received a free review unit so that we could check it out. Opinions are our own. I knew that the kids would be excited about this set because they love donuts and animals. Andy is a huge fan of Narwhals and one of the animals inside is a Narwhal. We started working on that donut first. I helped Andy out and then had him do a portion of it. We’ll have to do more together later to finish it up. The setif for grades 3 and up so kids 8 and up are the target for this. There are needles included and a sharp needle in younger hands may not be the nest idea. Now Eva has been learning how to sew in a sewing class. She started it before the COVID-19 quarantin. While we have been in quarantine she has been doing a lot of sewing both by hand and on Allison’s grandmother’s antique sewing machine. I asked Eva to sew any one of the donut animals and she did it completely on h...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00498 We received one of the forthcoming oys from Sunny Days Entertainment for fee to unravel and review. The toy is called Ravel Tales and opinions are our own. This new toy from Sunny Days Entertainment is cute for the younger crowd that wants to enjoy the unboxing experience but also likes to do DIY activities. The concept is that the entire unravelling experience is part of the unboxing. You start with unravelling the filler yarn for the pet bed that you make with other yarn and cut out fabric pieces found further inside the unravelled ball of various yarns, charms and moer. There is even a small stuffed animal inside. The animal could be one of the Knittens (kitty cats), Pom Pom Pups (puppy dogs), Button Bears (teddy bears) or Purl Ponies (ponies). Such a cute set of names for these toys. Eva did the unravelling of the product in the video below. While this was fun it is definitely for younger kids. Once the whole ball was unravelled Eva made the pet bed and some ...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00497 The folks at Super Impulse sent me a package of the World’s Smallest Transformers that they are producing. They are very cool. I love the packaging. It is very nostalgic. I have the full unboxing of these toys in the video below.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00496 Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. Around here Allison had a nice day that started off with breakfast made by Andy plus some Dunkin Donuts Coffee. I’ll go there if it is a special occasion because my choice is always Honey Dew and Allison’s first choice is always Dunkin. So, for Mother’s Day I figured that Dunkin would be the better choice. The kids gave Allison some very nice cards. She went with them on a long walk today while I slept. When I woke up I grilled up some very tasty steaks for dinner. I had picked them up over at the Chartley Country Store on Friday. I am very pleased with the new grill. The whole searing burner is perfect. One minute on that for each side and then a couple of minutes per side on the regular burners and we had some perfectly grilled steaks. After dinner the kids made Allison an ice cream sundae and Andy did a hand and foot massage. I’m not sure how relaxing that was.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00495 Tonight we got a chance to break in both the new grill and the new fire table. It is not a fire pit as I had called it previously. This is a propane fire table. The kids wanted to try it out tonight even though it was quite chilly and there were snowflakes falling from the sky when we went out to use it. Granted, the snowflakes were miniscule but there was snow in May. I was able to use the side burner to heat up some baked beans. I’m anticipating making good use of that side burner for many more things. Allison sliced up some potatoes that we had gotten from imperfect foods. We started getting deliveries from them once the pandemic hit because that was a good way to get fresh veggies. What we receive is random, for the most part but we can select some things. The fresh sirloin burgers from Chartley Country Store were so worth it. No more frozen hockey pucks for me. These were fresh burgers that were probably the best ones I’ve ever grilled. I also think that the...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00494 The main task of the day today was to assemble the new grill. I picked up a Char-Broil© Performance Series™ 6-Burner Gas Grill. I wanted a new grill that would have a huge surface for grilling and this baby will do 40 burgers at once. Not sure how big those would be but whatever it says 40. I also picked up a light to put on the handle and a griddle insert for grilling breakfast. Eva helped me assemble the grill because she loves assembling things with me. She did a great job on the fire table and I had her help me more on this once I took all the parts out of the box. As soon as I got that all unpacked assembly began. It took us a couple of hours to get it assembled. We finished just before our Friday afternoon family Zoom session. This was a nice one. My sister, Tara, asked us all to send in some pictures and we got a chance to tell a story about each of the pictures. That was nice because it gave Andy a chance to talk at an appropriate time. He did pretty good...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00493 I spent today helping my dad work on cleaning out a basement. When I got home I was greeted by some cave drawings from Andy. He took chalk and made paint with it. Then he painted his “cave drawings” on the gate of our fence. He put the paint on his hands and feet to make prints, too. He was quite proud of his work. He couldn’t wait for me to get home to see it. For most of the day I helped dad clean out a basement to prep it for remodeling. Of course when we got there a simple tearing out of carpet was complicated with a washing machine that overflowed the night before. So in addition to the carpet there were many, many pounds of water to clean up. The first couple of hours were just hauling out that wet rug and cabinets and molding. Then we finally got all the wet stuff out and mopped up. We worked on the room that was not wet and that was quick. That gave us more time to figure out how to get an upright full sized freezer out of the basement. This thing must ha...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00492 This past weekend I went and made a purchase from Lowe’s. I got us a new grill and a fire pit. They arrived today and Eva helped me build the Fire Pit. She loves helping assemble things with me and she is a great partner in that. She thinks about what needs to be done next and takes care of it. I can tell her what I need and she will find the tool or the piece of hardware. We put the whole thing together in time for a family bingo night. Tonight we did family bingo with Allison’s side of the family. We sent pizza to Nate and Sarah. We got some pizza of our own, too. Mimi and Dano also got some pizza and then we all played Bird Bingo. We got the idea from my brother-in-law, Erik. He set up the Bird Bingo and pizza night that we had on my family’s side.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00491 Break out the tequila because today is Cinco de Mayo and it is also a Taco Tuesday. Here we had tacos of the beef and fish variety. I made margaritas for me and for Allison. No, that is not an actual margarita in Andy’s hands. He is having gatorade in one of our margarita glasses and Eva is having milk in hers. They just wanted to celebrate, too. We had a fine meal and laughs. Andy misjudged putting down his glass and spilled gatorade everywhere, which was no fun but got a few more laughs. I had my one alcoholic drinks a year and it was quite tasty. One shot of tequila in mine. I’m good till next year. I certainly hope that next year, the word Corona has more to do with the beer than anything else.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00490 We received a copy of Story Time Chess for free to play with and review. Opinions are our own. When I was a kid we used to have a home in New Hampshire. My Dad and his friend built the place and we would go there for a couple of weeks each Summer. We’d also go in the Winter. There was no TV there and you pretty much could explore the backyard, read and play games. My dad taught me how to play chess during those trips to the cabin. It is something that I have always carried with me. How to play chess is something that I think all kids should be taught. I’ve taught Andy how to play chess in the past. He loves the game. He does not like losing to me over and over but he keeps trying. We had a board that tried to teach kids about all the pieces but it was sort of high-brow and stuffy. I couldn’t even get through it. However, Story Time Chess is different it is geared toward the younger player and explains the movements of the pieces in such clear language. The explan...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00489 Before the Corona outbreak I was in and out of Targets almost every week and I always made a trip through the toy aisle. While there are many toys that I no longer collect there are some that I keep picking up whenever I can and mostly they are fun Hot Wheels cars. A few months back Hot Wheels released 5 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle character cars. They had the four turtles and a Shredder car. I found all of those ones and added them to my collection. the other day I was on Amazon.com and saw that there were some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles themed cars. These are different than character cars. Character cars are made to look like the character and character themed cars may have images of the characters on them. That’s what the ones above are. They are character themed cars. I am not sure if they will be doing more cars like this or more character cars. There are many iterations of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and so far both the Character and Character Themed...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00488 Andy has been flexing his creative muscles lately. He’s been digging through the recycling and creating all sorts of creatures of his own design. We made a couple of things from empty soda cans and even made a lion from an empty blueberry container. He’s been very creative lately. When I woke up today I see that he has made some caterpillars from an empty egg carton. I don’t know what he’ll make next but it will certainly be cute and creative.