BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #02688 Not since I was 10 years old pushing around Mrs. Godlewsky's electric mower and carrying tons and tons of cord with me have I used an electric based lawn mower. That is, until today. I went to start my gas mower on Monday and it would do nothing so I hauled that and a bunch of other junk from the garage onto the front lawn with a Free sign on it. I ordered myself an EGO electric mower from Lowes and even got a $75 rebate instantly from MassSave. I used the mower on the yard for the first time today and it worked great. The one single charge on the battery allows me to do the whole lawn.

Photo-A-Day #02687 Tonight we had a family movie night and watched Project Hail Mary. It was an excellent movie. Really entertaining. I did manage to fall asleep for a bit of it, though. Wasn't entirely my fault as it was a Monday night after a long weekend of work. Eva had seen the movie already and she was very excited to hear what we had to say. I would say that we all thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I think the next family movie night will be Stand By Me. We'll go back and forth between classics and new movies.

Photo-A-Day #02686 The other day Allison and I were walking int he backyard and noticed that one of the bunnies had made its way into the raised bed. They had dislodged a tomato plant and dug a bit in there, too. So, Allison and Eva put the net over the whole thing to try and keep the bunnies out. We have many more this year than last year and I even saw babies around too.

Photo-A-Day #02685 Today Allison and I took Andy to the birthday party of their girlfriend's little sister. They had a bounce house and Andy was immediately dragged into the thing to bounce around with the little kids. The little sister turned 5 an she is in love with Andy. Andy was so cute with her too. They bounced around like crazy and then also carried her around.  Before the party I went and picked up a Founders Box of mini pretzel rivets to bring with us to the party. It was a huge hit. Everyone loves pretzels. There was a guy there that was a traveling marketer/sales guy and he was all about buying them and bringing them to his business calls. I texted my boss at Philly Pretzel Factory to connect the two. Hope I get a commission on what he ends up spending.  The party was fun. Andy's girlfriend has a very big, loud, boisterous family. Our sweet quiet guy was a bit out of their depth but they did have a good time none-the-less. 

Photo-A-Day #02684 I worked at the Pretzel Factory again today and later int he afternoon before I left for the day we got an online order for a large party tray of mini hot dogs. We made them up and got things ready. Then my boss noticed that the order was for Sunday. We already had 72 of these things baking. So, I ended up taking a whole giant bucket of them to bring home for dinner. I also had a bag of them so we ate dinner and ended up with a still full bucket of these little guys. Crazy.

Photo-A-Day #02683 When I came in to work today the owner was making some pretzel bagels. He had picked up some Everything seasoning and added it to these. I brought a couple of them home for Allison to try. I thought about them a little and suggested that if we prepared this the same way that we prepared our cinnamon rivets we could essentially make donuts. So we tried it. My boss actually had a donut cinnamon sugar because the cinnamon sugar that they normally used was missing. It had not been ordered. They came out really good. Tonight we watched The Outsiders as a family. We've been reading the book, Allison and Eva saw the musical, I listened to the audiobook and Andy is studying the book at school. I had never seen the movie before. Eva watched it with Aviva and Andy saw the Drive-In theater scene and trailer at school. 

Photo-A-Day #02682 I picked up a couple more garden items for the house. We have a small standing planter that we will use for the lettuce that we got at Briggs. The colorful hanging planters are going to be filled with the herbs that we started from seeds. We'll see how this all goes. I installed a large dowel onto the side of the railing on the back porch.