BenSpark Family Adventures

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...