BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02542 This afternoon and into tonight we went to the Salem Cross Inn for one of their Fireside feasts. This was the last one of the year and a celebration of the New Year.  We arrived and went to the basement of the building where they have this giant fireplace and there is an antique roasting jack, the only one still in use. There are 6 prime ribs roasting in the fire. They had started the roasting around 2pm. This location was the gathering place for everyone before going upstairs to enjoy the feast. There is a bit of theater to have before that. The kids were dressed warmly and nicely for the occasion.  We had to dress warm because we would be on a sleigh ride around the property.  I even pulled out my very heavy sweater for the occasion.  The horses that drew our sleigh were Jerry and Jim. We posed with them after the ride. They gave us either Mulled Cider or Mulled Wine to enjoy. They did the mulling with rods from the fire. It was cool to watch...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02538 Today we went on our annual family bowling trip to Mashpee Commons. We started doing this last year as an activity rather than sitting around the house all day. I did not take the photo so the photo from the even cannot be today's daily photo. But here is the group photo. Who knows, this may be next year's Christmas card photo but we may get a better one this Summer on the beach or something like that. Bowling was a good time. The kids all bowled together. Tara, Erik, Shelby and Tim had their own lane and Allison, Me, Grandfather and Mem also had our own lane. It was a nice time. Always fun family activity. We were treated to another beautiful sunset tonight. I like this photo of all of us the best but Moms eyes are shut. the think I like is that you can actually see Andy, not just their eyes. But as far as eyes, Kylie has a killer Side-eye going on here.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02536 This morning we woke up and had our family Christmas with cinnamon rolls, presents and opening of stockings. We hung around the house enjoying each other's company and exchanging gifts for a while. The big family gift was to go see Weird Al Yankovic in July. Allison got me tickets to the GenX takeover tour and tickets for she and Eva to see Wicked. It was a nice morning.  I'm sort of in charge of the stockings and I picked up a ton of stuff for everyone else at Aldi this year. Lots of interesting sweets. For myself I found some World's Smallest Transformers, G.I.Joe and He-Man figures. They were cool because they each came with a super tiny version of the original comic books from 1984. I ended up with Issues 2 and 3 of Transformers and Issue #1 of G.I. JOE. I am tempted to see if the Target had any more so I could get issue #1. Today is when Allison and the kids actually saw with the house now looks like after the yard was cleared of a couple of tree...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02535 Today is Christmas Eve. We are all off of school and finishing up last minute things for the holiday. Allison made her chicken soup for dinner and we went to 4pm Mass for the holiday. We got the yearly photo of the kids in front of the nativity scene. After Mass we drove home quickly to get bundled up for a walk around La Salette to see the lights. It was frigid cold out and we had to basically speed walk around the place. No stopping at the Nativity Scene Museum today, Allison had gone earlier in the week with her friend Jenn.  We made one lap and headed home for some hot chicken stew. The big pile of tree trunks from our trees were picked up this morning. A guy came with a truck with a giant grabber arm and he vey efficiently picked through the logs and put them onto his truck. He must have an amazing sense of space because they fit on that truck very well. We all watched. After dinner we watched a movie. We watched many Christmas movies this year. I'm not ...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02481 Andy has been carving a giant branch from our tree all week long for their Halloween costume. Last night Allison and Andy worked on the costume. Last night Allison and I went and got rope form Michael's for the costume. Last night Andy let us know that they were not wearing that costume to school. This was after we had had a conversation, Allison and I, about how much we loved that Andy got into Spirit Week at school so heavily despite having to go to the High School each morning in their costumes or carrying their nonsense. We love that Andy embraces the joy of a spirit week.  So, when andy told us that they were not wearing the costume that they had been working on to school we figured that there must be something that Andy could wear instead. I suggested to Andy that because they still had their Bob Ross hair and beard that they could go as Bob Ross. Andy really liked that idea and this morning gout out the whole costume, minus peapod the squirrel because ...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02363 Today is the Fourth of July and I am not at all excited about celebrating. I started the day with my morning walk along Great Bay and nearly ran into my old manager, someone I despise. Luckily he did not see me and I shot past him quickly. I did text my cousin to let him know what I saw. It took the rest of the walk to calm back down. Around 10am we headed over to Eva’s friend Max’s house so that we could park in his yard and walk down to the Science School so Eva could link up with the staff there to be a part of the parade. Allison, Andy and I walked around Woods Hole for a while and then found seats to watch the parade. I don’t like parades. Rather, I don’t like people at parades. No matter where we are there is always someone moving right in front of us or squeezing by me. We were 15 people all seated along steps and for some reason every person who wanted to get behind us went by me. Every one. I was watching. Then there are people who crowd in on the parade...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02291 We’re on the Cape for the next couple of days for the Easter holiday. Today was Easter. I worked last night so when I finished I slept for a few hours and then we went to Mass at St. Anthony’s. It was a very well done Mass. We then came home and had a very nice Easter lunch. I picked up a butter sculpture from Munroe dairy. It was a nice touch to the table. The kids loved it. After lunch we enjoyed playing a new game callled Tapple. Andy and I also played the game One Hit Heroes. This was a game I got through Kickstarter. Good strategy game.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02257 Today was Saint Patrick’s Day and we did our usual Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner. Allison picked up 3 corned beef packages this year, 2 point and one flat. I used the crock pot for one point and one flat and filled the crock pot with guinness and coke plus cabbage and ran that for the whole day 8 hours. In the Instant Pot I took a point corned beef along with the Guinness and Coke plus carrots, cabbage, potatoes, onions and garlic. I wanted to try something different with this one. I set it to slow cook for 8 hours and then finished it with pressure cook for 1 hour. In all they pretty much came out the same. I didn’t notice much difference ot much enhancement using garlic and onions. I picked up Irish Soda bread and Irish Brown Bread over at Brigid’s in Norton. That is a cute little place. while I was there I also got a couple treats for Allison and the kids.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02207 This year when I was ordering the Hallmark ornament I saw that they had a special Optimus Prime ornament. Instead of adding it to the tree, which I still need to take down, I put it with my Optimus Prime figures in my office. Maybe this one will make it to the tree next year.

  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...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02148 We hosted Thanksgiving today. Mem and Grandfather came down from the Cape for our Thanksgiving meal. I picked up the meal from Fireflies yesterday. We got a smoked turkey breast and brisket plus lots of sides. Allison made an apple pie and a chocolate cream pie. Mem brought some Cranberry Bog ice cream and more sides. We had a delicious meal. It was a really nice day together. Tonight we got into our new Christmas Pajamas and watched the movie, The Wild Robot. Our pjs were from Five Below (shirt) and Old Navy (pants). The shirt says “check Yourself Before You Deck Yourself” The movie was very good.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02120 Today was Halloween. Andy got to wear their costume to school and ended up walking home with this Hoof feet in Crocs despite having regular sneakers from gym class. When asked about this they told us that they had forgot that they had the sneakers. Sounds about right. andy wanted to go trick or treating tonight and I was going to walk around with them. We asked Eva if she’s like to go so she threw on her Spider girl costume and SCAD sweatpants and went as art school spider girl. Allison also came with us and we walked around the neighborhood. There were not many houses that were participating in handing out candy but the kids did a fairly decent job with what was there. I think this may be the last time that we do this together. I’m happy that they still enjoy dressing up and going out trick or treating. I’m not sure that it will continue much longer.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02005 Today was the Fourth of July. Andy and I went paddle boarding this morning. It was a bit too windy so it was tough to paddle. We’ll have to do it again in the next few weeks. In the afternoon we went to the beach for a bit. It was packed to the gills with people everywhere. We had a cook out for dinner and then we watched the fireworks from the front porch. We had a very good view from the porch and the fireworks this year were excellent. there was a very heavy police presence and so it was pretty orderly overall. A good year for the fourth this year.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01987 Today was Father’s Day. I had to sleep most of the day because I worked last night but at least I was able to work from home. When I woke up we had bugers from the Meat Bar and Allison made some Mexican Street Corn macaroni salad. We had a very nice dinner before I had to go back to work. The kids and Allison made me cards and gave me a gift card to Fireflies. We'll have to go there very soon. Later on we had some hot fudge sundaes. Allison brought a giant tub of hot fudge from school home and we now have 3 mason jars full of it. She also brought home a ton of whipped cream cans, too. These were leftovers from the ice cream socials at school. today was also my parent’s 51st wedding anniversary. I called them later on tonight before work.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01945 Each year I have two special drinks. A Guinness at Saint Patrick’s Day and a Margarita for Cinco De Mayo. Tonight Allison made tacos as well as some very tasty margaritas. Andy had a virgin one with just the sour mix. they seemed to like it. But they really liked loading up on tacos.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01897 This morning I came home from work. First one out the door because we now have to work the entire night and can’t slip out during our break. That is, until this no longer becomes a point of interest for the upper management. Had things just been done quietly it would still be going smoothly. I took a quick little nap and then we caught up with my parents and they took us to lunch at Box Seats. We had a very nice lunch together and then they went home after their month or so in Florida. They brought the nice warm weather with them, too. I went home and got some more sleep before work tonight. Allison made a great boiled dinner for us and also some Irish Soda bread. Everything came out terrific. I even had my yearly pint of Guinness.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01823 I had the day off for New Year’s Eve and we took it easy most of the day. We prepared for our friends The PRestons to come over to celebrate the new year. They have two girls who are older than Andy and the other is older and Eva. However, they all get along so well and the kids have so many interests that compliment each other. We even learned that one daughter loves to paint swords. I think I know who to send The Sword of Omens when it is time to paint. Allison and I always have great conversations with Aaron and Denise. We haven’t seen each other in a long time but it was so nice to get back together as if no time had passed.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #01817 Christmas Day here was a bit different than past years. We were going to be spending the entire day on our own because we’re spending the next couple of days with family on the Cape. We started off our morning with Stockings and cinnamon rolls. Allison made them fresh the other day and we had plenty for our morning. We took our time with everything and slowly opened our gifts. We didn’t go fully overboard this year because there was one big gift for everyone and Allison and I had already given ourselves a night out as a gift so we were a bit more reserved with the overall gift giving this year. Allison got the kids each some stuffed animals from IKEA that they loved. Andy got a octopus and Eva a shark. I just know that Eva is going to do some project with that. Andy was a the prankster by wrapping a can of soup for me that looked like a mug. I have this thing about the number of mugs we have in the house. There are too many so when we were shopping and Andy sugg...