BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02539 Our last day on the Cape. We hung out till around noon and then headed home. Lexie has been huirting a bit, she need surgery on her knee and is having a tough time getting up onto the couch, but she has been managing.  We drove home and got settled back in at home. Caught one more mouse and had a couple of traps tripped. Still hearing a bit of scrabbling in the ceiling and walls so I hope those ones make their way down to the basement and are taken care of soon. The gifts that I had ordered for Erik and Tim arrived. While they were actual products and not a total scam I do feel a bit cheated on them. They were supposed to be in nice boxes and they were supposed to be the charred version of these bourbon drinking cups. They came together in just a single bag. Very disappointing. Eva got a call from Mimi, she's taking Eva and Allison to London over February break. Now we have to scramble to get Eva a passport.

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 #02537 We're down the Cape for a few days to enjoy time with family and celebrate Christmas. Today my sister Shelby and her family came down. All the kids are getting so big. The boys are now taller than Grandfather and the girls are taller than Mem. The boys are so close in height that they are pretty much equal in that respect. Eva still has an inch or so on Kylie. We enjoyed the day,m exchanged gifts and had a nice time together. Andy and Grandfather finished the puzzle first thing in the morning. We took many photos in front of the tree at the end of the day.  The Cousins Shelby's Family with Mem and Grandfather Shelby's Family Mem, Grandfather, Drew, Tara and Shelby Our Family The kids with Auntie Tara and Uncle Erik Tara and Kylie Tara and Erik Me and Allison I was very excited to give my sister and my dad these dog poop bags. I saw them online and knew I had to get them. They are hilarious. I am also so glad I was not scammed. It was a very nice day...

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 #02534 No, ot Christmas trees. We had two of our trees in our yard taken down today. We went with the company, Out On a Limb and they were excellent. It took a while for them to actually come but when they did they got everything done in the day. I no longer have to worry that someone is going to get crushed by our giant dying tree in the side yard. That sucker is gone and it was so dead inside. I think that this tree needed to come down when we moved in and that was 14 years ago. It took me that long to bite the bullet, get the cash and get it done. We were all watching from the windows as the guys took these trees down and ground most of them up. The pile above will be picked up tomorrow.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02533 I went out shopping today for some Christmas gifts. Some of the ones that I had ordered are not going to make it for Christmas if they even make it to me at all. I am starting to think I got scammed on this purchase. And that sucks because the thing I ordered would be perfect. So instead I was off at the liquor stores for gifts. I came across an interesting beer called Dragon's Milk. So I bought a few. I don't drink often. I drink from time to time.It was pretty good. 

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02532 One of Eva's friends wanted to print out a file on our 3D printer and I hadn't had it up and running for the better part of a year. I had a cover for it that my cousin Shaun printed for me. However, it broke and so I ordered a new one because I finally found an official one from Creality. I also got a few upgrades for the 3D printer that I will install at a later time. I only needed the cover to get started. I'm still kicking myself for not clearly labelling ever screw after I took this thing apart the first time.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02531 There is a Tik Tok creator that I have been following for a while and I am a fan of their work. She cosplays characters from Star Trek and this past couple years I have been enjoying the heck out of the Star Trek franchise on Paramount +. Seraphima cosplays Lt. Ortega the ship's pilot. She also has a service dog named Riker after Commander Riker from Star Trek: The Next Generation. This year at Megacon Jonathan Frakes, the actor that portrays Commander Riker, will be at the event. Seraphima wants to get a photo of her service dog, Riker with Riker. So she has attempted to raise money by selling photos of Riker that were signed by her dog. I bought one and it arrived today. She also included a Christmas card and some Star Trek stickers.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02530 A while back skybound put together a Kickstarter for a Transformers Compendium. This collects the 80 issues from the 80's - 90's. That is the collection of comics I just completed in their original form. The compendium is 4 giant embossed cover books. Then they reprinted 3 key issues from the comic book series. They were issues 2,5 and 67. They even made some tech specs, lenticular images and portraits of characters. I did buy an extra Decepticon sticker because I bought the Autobot version of the compendium and so the sticker for Decepticons only was part of the Decepticon version. There was also an Autobot pin and a challenge coin. It is a beautiful set.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02529 Eva's friend Ollie has a 3D print that they want to get done and asked if they could use our printer. I had not used the printer in a while so I ran some test prints. I then decided to try printing something I had wanted to print for a while and well, the red thing int he picture, that is a 3D printed cover that my cousin Shaun made me when my actual cover broke. That has now broken as well. So, I searched on amazon and see that there are a few upgrade kits I can get for the printer. I'm getting a new cover and a few other things to give the printer the ability to print multiple colors of filament in a single print. I won't be getting the item that you need to do this quite yet. Let's see how much printing I actually do in a while but the ability is there when I decide to go for it. At least it will be when the kits arrive this weekend and I overhaul the printer. Tonight was the talent show and play at Andy's school. andy ran the lights for th...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02528 Tonight at dinner Eva let us know that she had a decision email in her inbox from MassArt and she wanted to open it with us around her!. She was accepted for the 2026-2027 school year! We are very excited and happy for her because this is Eva's first choice for school and she has been eagerly awaiting the decision. Now, her stress is over.  Mine begins. Se did get $1000 a year in an award right off the bat so that is great to hear. Now we just work on the financial aid stuff. And preparing ourselves for her eventual departure from the house. Don't want to think about that yet.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02527 It is very fitting that I received this note along with the final two Transformers Generation 1 comics for my collection. Issues 72 and 77 are now in my possession. I had many conversations with this seller. We even shared photos of our Transformers toy collections. He was really excited by my love for the franchise and was glad to sell the books to me. This note shows a great deal of care that he took with his books and also with making my purchase special. He couldn't have known that this would be my last comics for my completed collection or rather that they would arrive last. Just very cool to see that he cared. 

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02526 I continue to find cool things for my Wheeljack collection.The figure is Wheeljack from Transformers One prior to getting back his transformation cog. He's standing on two comic books. They are Transformers #21 of the new Skybound continuity. The covers, however are done by Tiago Da Silva my new favorite Transformers artist. He's done handful of these special covers for Transformers comics. today I received about 7 of them and learned that there are still 2 more that I do not have. What he does is creates one cover of a shiny new robot and the other cover is battle damaged. So the left one is battle damaged and the right is pristine. It is a very cool concept that he's done for many great characters. What turned me on to his covers and artwork was this Wheeljack set. I'm really excited to have it now!

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02525 Today Allison and I went to see my ACT friends Fred and Han in A Christmas Carol. They are part of the Roundabout Productions theater company and they performed A christmas Carol. Fred was Scrooge and han was Fred and also Young Scrooge. It was a good show. There was also a lot of music in the show with some traditional old English Christmas carols. It was nice to see them perform. Fred was a perfect Scrooge. I think they may have even repurposed some materials from Sly Fox like the bed from the show. It certainly looked familiar.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02524 Tonight Andy and I went to Boston for the Mix 104.1 Deck The Hall Ball. This was Andy's big birthday gift because the headliner was AJR. They were excellent to see in person. Their songs are fun and there was one point where they even broke down how they created the song "World's Smallest Violin". IT was super cool to watch.  There were two opening acts and they were pretty good. Andy was super enthusiastic when AJR came on. Clapping for each song and swaying to the music. Big smile on their face, too. We had pretty decent seats. The music was LOUD so I am glad that I had bought some LOOP ear protection before the show. They really helped me enjoy things so much more. It was a good time. Lots of fun with Andy.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02523 Tonight Allison had Colleen over and the two of them made meatballs. They made a ton of them and when they were done let Me and the kids have a couple before they were all packed up for meals. I think Allison said she got enough made for four meals for us and Colleen took the other half of them home with her.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02522 Tonight we went to see The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge at the Attleboro Community Theater. Many folks who were in the play had been in plays with me in the past and it was night to see everyone. A couple of people who were also in plays with me were there in the audience and they are in plays themselves. They are in The Christmas Carol and I'm going to go see that Sunday. It was a nice show and I even won tickets to come back to another show. So I have at least two tickets already taken care of for my show, The Winter Wolf in March.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02521 Today was Anything but a Water Bottle day at school for Andy. So I did some arts and crafts and made a cookie tin canteen. I was trying to make it so that the cookie tin actually held the water but I cheated and shoved a diet coke bottle inside and put a hole in the tin and then sealed it up. I got some red suspenders from Savers and hot glued them to the sides of the canteen so that andy could carry it around school. People got a kick out of it.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02520 Tonight was the table read for The Winter Wolf. This is a play that I am performing in with the Attleboro Community Theater. I was asked to take on the role of the Father for this play. It is a very interesting play and there are a lot of big ideas for how to do the play. I'm looking forward to it and even more excited now that we have had our table read. I snapped this photo as a sort of teaser of what it too come.