BenSpark Family Adventures

We received a free copy of Chicken War™ the Strategic Guessing Game from Think Fun to play with and Review. Opinions are our own. We’ve always been a family that enjoys playing board games. Now with the whole family home every day during the quarantine/isolation we have been playing a lot more. Thankfully Think Fun has supplied us with a new game to help pass the time and frustrate me to no end. Let me explain. Chicken War™ is a strategic guessing game where you battle other players to see if you can assemble a chicken army before the other players can guess your chicken leader. But there is a catch, there is always a catch. In order to have a full chicken army every one of the recruits has to share 2 and only two traits with the leader. I played this with Andrew and over and over again I thought I had everything right only to find that one of the recruits shared 3 things in common. When that happens you have to pick a new leader and then start assembling the army once again. I think t...

I seriously do not think that I am ready to say goodbye to She-Ra when the final season drops on May 15th. This has been a fantastic series to watch with the kids. It bridges the gap between the shows that I watched as a kid and modern shows of today. This series has been incredible and has been such a joy to watch. I got some goosebumps while watching the trailer for this season. The song is AJ Michalka’s cover of She-Ra theme song “Warriors”. There will even be a full series soundtrack available May 8.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00486 Back on April 17th Jakks Pacific sent me a HUGE box of The Last Kids on Earth toys for free. I could play with them and review them as I wished. Opinions are my own and these are fun toys. I know that they are fun toys because I got a kick out of them, Andy played for hours with them and continues to do so and the toys are very show accurate. It makes a big difference when care is taken to make the figures look like they do in the show. I do wish, however that there were larger figures of the kids. More like 3.5 inch Action Figures or larger. The size they are is great for imaginative play and use with the monsters and the playset. I guess if you want to have the right scale then if you make the kids bigger the monsters would be huge. The monsters have great detail and action areas. Each one has a weak spot so that they can be knocked over with a disk shooter. The different disk shooters are a hoot. They also take into consideration the show. Each disk has a feat...

We received a copy of Water Game from Adventerra Games for free to play and review. Opinions are our own. Being cooped up at home with the family has been a good way for us to spend time together. We also welcome distractions and play so when I was asked if we wanted to check out Adventerra Games’ new board game called Water Game I was, well, game. In Water Game each player is not only trying to win on their own but each player has to have a minimum number of gallons of water or everyone loses. It a cross between a competitive and cooperative game. The kids and I sat down to play. I read the directions which were very simple overall. It was simply four pages of information r rather one page folded in half. So, the instructions were very quick and straightforward. You don’t even know how many times just reading the directions of a game put the kids off wanting to play. However, we were able to jump right in. Each player gets a little fish character to use to swim downriver. They also ha...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00485 I helped my dad today. He called me last night and asked if I would help him put in some windows at a house he was working on. He’s replaced all the windows in this house over the years and was on the last two. We did uphold social distancing as the window was 7 feet wide and we each had to hold onto one end. Then when the window was in we were separated by the glass, plus our masks. It was good to see my dad outside of a zoom window. Our family has been having zoom sessions once a week and while they are great and nice to see everyone I’d much rather be able to see everyone in person. I don’t know when it will be safe to gather once more. I don’t put that much faith in early loosening of restrictions. We’ve got masks though and do the hand washing so at least there is that and that is more than so many other people are doing. Earlier this week I went to the supermarket to get groceries. I only do this once a week, alone and masked. I see so many people who do no...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00484 Today is National Superhero Day. Allison has been making masks and she found some great material that have the Marvel superheroes on it. She made this one for me that has Iron Man showing quite prominently. I wore it for the better part of the morning. First thing I did was take Andy over to America’s Best Defense because we could pick up our new belts. We both earned our green belts and also our first stripes on those belts. We continue to take classes every Monday and Wednesday via Zoom. I brought Andy back to the house and then went out again to the Post Office and then Stop & Shop. It is hard being out and about. Things needed to get done. Groceries needed to be picked up and masks needed to be mailed out. I could not believe how many people were not wearing anything over their mouths and noses or if they were wearing masks the masks were not completely covering their mouths and noses. Not very effective. I’ve been thinking on national superhero day and h...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00483 While we are homebound during the quarantine there are some things that we have been doing to pass the time. The kids have been doing some silly food stuff. They have been taking turns picking foods for each other to eat while blindfolded. For the most part I think it is another way to sneak in more snacks. They have been pretty nice to each other doing this although Andy did give Eva some cauliflower crackers to try. They are the size and shape of Cheez-Its but they are definitely NOT Cheez-Its. Such an aftertaste! I don’t think we’ve falen quite far enough from decent snacks to choose those if not blindfolded. It took a global pandemic but Eva has found that her personal workspace in the house was not cutting it with so much clutter. She has begun to take some really good steps toward having an organized and clean workspace. We have not even been harping on her about it. During April vacation we started working on an escape puzzle. The puzzle was called The Cur...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00482 After dinner Andy made us sundaes. Then he made his own. He is of the persuasion that you can never have enough toppings. Needless to say he had a double brushing tonight.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00481 I have some homework ahead of me this week. Andy and I have been reading Max Brallier’s The Last Kids on Earth books together. I think that this is one that Andy won’t read on it’s own because he might be a little scared but if I read it with him he is brave. We’ve been watching the Netflix series based on these books (done very well indeed) and he’s been enjoying that. We also have to work on a video of us unboxing the toys from the show, too. But my main homework is to read all of the books and soon. I want to be totally up on all things that have to do with these kids and their adventures. There may just be a very important reason for why I have to do this soon.

We received a digital download code for the game Gigantosaurus The Game from Outright Games as part of my participation in a Twitter Party today at 11am. Opinions are my own. I am always on the lookout for new fun games for my kids. Andy and Eva has been playing more video games lately and that’s great. I love that they are bonding over several games. I was able to get chosen to participate in a Twitter party for Gigantosaurus The Game and with it came a download code of the whole game that the kids could play on the Nintendo Switch. The game has two major parts to it. There is the adventure portion of the game and there is the racing portion of the game. The racing game has pretty simple controls but a fun experience. AS you zip along the track you have to collect objects and avoid obstacles. Meanwhile much larger dinos are walking around and through the course. You have to be quick as you steer aredound their giant feet. In the adventure portion of the game you can switch between the...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00480 Earlier this week the kids and I set up their very special crystal growing set. We mixed the solutions, poured in the crystal seeds and now we wait. We put the crystal growing baths up above the mantle because no one can accidentally knock them over and neither can the cats. The only way to get to them is with a step stool. The crystals grow in the solution uncovered and that is another reason having them up way high is a good idea. Small fingers and curious kids do not make for patience. As the crystals grow there is a danger that they will grow out of their containers. That is what we are seeing here. To prevent that or to help control it there are some paper disks to put on top of the open containers. That way the crystals will grow onto those pieces of paper instead of growing over the sides and onto the top of the mantle. I took today’s photo before I knocked these pieces off and back into the solution. Not sure if I should have put it back in but figured wh...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00479 I received a copy of the Escape Puzzle: The Curse of the Wolves from Ravensburger to try out and review. Opinions are my own.Each April vacation we try and keep things low key. When I was at Toy Fair this year I knew that we would be heading to upstate New York to a quiet AirBNB to spend quality family time. That turned into the whole Coronavirus quarantine and we ended up having to cancel that trip but we spent plenty of quality family time together. Luckily we still had the puzzle that we would be working on together. I noticed the Escape Puzzle called The Curse of the Wolves at the Ravensburger booth and it was something I had never heard of or seen before. You solve the puzzle but you also have to figure out how to escape from the tricky situation that you find yourself in from the puzzle. In this case you stumble upon five wolves in the forest. What do you do to escape. What makes this 759 piece puzzle tricky is that what you see on the front of the box is n...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00478 Here at the house we are getting so much use out of Allison’s grandmother’s sewing machine. Allison is making mask after mask and Eva is experimenting with different projects. Today she got started on creating a skirt. She had some old linen curtains that we no longer were using and so she used that as her “rough draft” of her first skirt. After that she moved on to some better fabric to make a more refined skirt. I think she was doing pretty well right out of the gate.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00477 If you are a reader of my daughter’s blog (for family and friends only) she has gone over much of what I am going to write about today. Eva has been keeping a daily blog called Quarantine Daily and a larger weekly post called, you guesses it, Quarantine Weekly. She started this all on her own for friend and family. Today’s post from her covered pretty much everything I am going to cover here. We are on School Vacation Week this week and as such the kids have had some big plans. They have wanted to make a blanket fort in the living room for such a long time. Today they got to do so. They hung out in that almost all da with frequent stops to do other things. We started growing some crystals, Eva sewed a skirt from a pattern that she found online. Both Allison and Eva have been getting tons of mileage out of Grandma Eva’s singer sewing machine. Allison have been cranking out all sorts of masks for people. She’s bought a ton of material and is making many many masks....

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00476 I received a free review copy of Pets and Their Famous Humans by Ana Gallo and illustrated by Katherine Quinn. Opinions are my own. When asked if I would like a complimentary copy of Pets and Their Famous Humans I thought about my son Andy. He wants to take care of animals when he grows up and I want him to read more. He loves his pet cat, Torrun, and so I figured that this would be a great book for him to read to learn about other people and their pets. I didn’t realize how much I would learn as well. I had Andy go through the book and pick out a few pet names that sounded interesting to him and he would read those pages. Then we would go over them together and I would ask him questions. We learned about the famous cats of Ernest Hemingway. I’d say that his cats are pretty famous in their own right at this point and many people have heard about his home in Key West Florida where the descendants of his cats live. But there was so much more to learn. Did you know ...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00475 Yesterday we woke up to a bunch of snow on the cars and on the trees. I was worried that we would not have these flowers after the snow had melted. However, they stayed on the tree and they look so pretty. If we would only have some nice days, or if only I was awake during the nice part of these days. My daughter has started her own blog for the family. She’s been updating all the things that she has been during in the quarantine. She set it all up herself through Google Sites. I am thinking that we might set up a Blogger blog for her in the future or as I had suggested to her already adding her blogs to this site. I could create a user for her and a section just for her to write in her blog updates.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00474 Each Saturday I have to still go to the office to run the physical switchboard. I’m the only one in the building except for one operations guy who is on the completely opposite side of the building. When I arrive and pull into the parking garage I am the only car there. So, never any trouble getting a spot. It is a bit strange being in a building all by myself. Although, I am only able to go into one small space of the building. Bathroom, Desk and Vending machine area. The rest of the building is shut down as it was cleaned. All of the other buildings that we have are closed down while everyone works from home. I go in because they still want someone to watch over the switchboard. I got pretty good sleep today. We had pre-ordered a half dozen donuts from Confectionery Designs and Allison and the kids picked them up. They have an interesting way in which to pick up the donuts. You arrive, park in front of a chair with a number on it. Then you call inside the build...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00473 Jakks Pacific sent us a box full of the new The Last Kids on Earth toys for free for us to review. A full on review is forthcoming but I wanted to post this up today because Book 2 of the series has landed on Netflix today. It is worth a watch, plus it has some great voice actors. When I was at Toy Fair a few months ago I was able to tour the Jakks Pacific booth and saw all the great toys that were coming from the company. When I left I walked by a small display on the side of the booth that had toys for The Last Kids on Earth. This is a book series by Max Brallier. I picked it up on a whim to see if Andy wanted to read it together and he has enjoyed it. We just haven’t spent as much time as I’ve wanted to actually read through the series. Andy is not a sit and listen for a long time sort of kid nor is he a sit and read for a long time sort of kid. He enjoy audio books before bed and people reading to him. He enjoys short reading and is a good reader. We’ve got t...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00472 Been talking about my kids riding their bikes this week. A lot! Well, today Andy got back on his actual bike and Eva strode out the door when she needed a break in order to take a bike ride around the block a few times. If you are reading my daughter’s family blog posts on her Quarantine Weekly (more like daily) site you already know that she is bike riding on her own. She’s got a route to ride that she likes to do and doesn’t go venturing beyond that route at this point. Of course, no one can ride with her anymore because she has grown into being able to ride the largest bike we have. I ran an errand today to bring a special Marvel mask that Allison made to the owner of Wild Time Comics. He often plays Thor during Free Comic Book Day and when Allison made this mask it just so happened to feature Thor on it prominently. So, I brought him one and picked up my comics and checked out what he had been doing in the store. I had my Marvel mask on which features Iron Ma...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00471 Yesterday we went for a bike ride around the block twice and had disastrous results. Today we tried again but this time Andy rode on his Nerf Battle Racer go Kart that we got from Hauck. They gave it to me free for a review but are not promoting their outdoor toys right now because of the COVID pandemic. Well, we are still going to do walks but we will stay safe with the masks that Allison has made for us. These were some of her first ones. Actually, Eva made her own. This time our walk/bike ride was a lot better. Andy appears to already be outgrowing the Battle Racer, he’s all legs. Eva is getting quite confident riding her bike. I was super sore from Monday’s Krav Workout which was all legs. I was a lot more patient this time even when Andy complained about the soreness of his tush on the Battle Racer’s seat. He did fly along though and got some good exercise. When we got back to the house I told Eva that she could go up the street on her own and do around the ...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00470 We had a hoppy little visitor to our house today. No, it wasn’t a late Easter Bunny. It was a gray tree frog. This little guy appeared on our back patio after last night’s wind storm. I’m pretty sure that he got blown out of the tree or was on one of the branches that fell from the tree. There were a large number of good sized branches that had come down from the tree. I picked up the largest ones early in the morning. Later on, andy wanted to play basketball so he picked up a bunch of the smaller one and when he was picking them up he accidentally picked up this frog and got a bit freaked out. I’m pretty sure the poor little guy was stunned from his falling from the tree. I nudged him over to the stone wall and then picked him up and put him in the leaves near the tree. He’d hop away on his own time. We checked on him later and he was gone. Later in the afternoon we went for a walk/bike ride. Andy had seen his younger cousin tooling around on her bike and he’s f...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00469 We had an unexpected day off today. Fr. Rodney gave the school Easter Monday off which was a total surprise to everyone this morning. So, with a day off the kids got to doing all sorts of things. Eva has been busily writing an adventure for us in Tiny Dungeon. She’s written 6 pages of a story and today we played that story. Her creativity extended into making a map for the game as well. Eva kept us entertained for a better part of a couple of hours as we created characters and played through this adventure of hers. She even created a special race of beings for Andy. They are Narwhalians. Andy made this character out of clay to represent his playable character in the game. Later in the afternoon Andy had his karate class and then I had my Krav Maga class. Two front kicks into class the heavy bag when flying off its ring and crashed onto the floor. The hook that had been holding it in place bent so bad that it could no longer hold the bag up. I guess that hook wasn...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00468 This was the most different Easter Sundays I have ever had in my life. We are all in home quarantine or isolation and we watched Easter Sunday Mass through Facebook Live. We got dressed in nice clothes for the day, and set up our dining room tables around the the laptop to watch Mass. I took tonight off so that I could spend the day with the family. I had worked last night and so I came home from the office around 7:30, fell asleep for an hour and then was up for most of the day. The kids had an egg hunt around the house and enjoyed their Easter Baskets. I had received some interesting things from Educational Insights and Learning Resources. We also managed to order a few things from Amazon and other companies and I picked up some candy from CVS on a trip for essentials. We had a nice afternoon and then gathered virtually with the family through a Zoom session. We were also joined by Grandma Bennett. I had to duck out a little early to run over to The Colonel Bla...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00467 A little bit before Easter I saw a post from a friend who has a bakery called Awesome Sweets. I saw that she was selling cookie decorating kits for Easter. The kids came with several egg and bunny shaped cookies, 6 colors of cream and candy decorations. I thought that it would be a nice thing to pick up for the kids and a good way to support a friend during this pandemic. So, I gave her a call last week and placed my order. I also figured that this would be a fun activity for my niece and nephew, so I ordered them a set as well. The boxes arrived this week and I put ours aside until today. The kids had some time this afternoon and so they did some decorating. Here are the different plates from the kids. Andy’s Cookies. Eva’s Cookies While I slept this afternoon they did their decorating. Allison made sure that she caught a few photos of the kids having fun decorating. After dinner tonight we tried them out and they were very tasty.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00466 This past week I saw that Honey Dew Donuts had some great looking donuts. The Instagram for our Honey Dew goes for 3 different locations. So many times a great looking donut only appears in Lincoln and Cumberland. I asked if they would have them at our location and they replied. They would have the special egg nest donut and some peeps donuts. Andy and Eva had the Peeps ones and Allison and I had the nest ones. The nest ones had toasted coconut and was filled with lemon. They were pretty tasty. I finished building my LEGO set on my LEGO Lunchtime Livestream. I had to work tonight so it was a quick nap and then when I woke up Andy had his Sensei connect session. I had one this morning and it was fun. We played a game called Code Names. It was an interesting game to play. We watched the movie Trolls: World Tour tonight and had pizza from Route 152 pizza. It was a nice time. The kids had so much fun with the movie. So many fun songs.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00465 Today was my 46th birthday. It was a very nice day. We had a nice morning and I did a special LEGO Lunchtime Livestream building a LEGO Marvel Super Heroes set. The kids and Allison went to visit one of Eva’s friends and did a birthday drive-by to celebrate her birthday. Eva gave her friend one of the new masks that she had made. So, while they were gone I did my Livestream and finished once they returned. They picked up Wendy’s for lunch. We enjoyed some burgers and frostys. Then we had a family Zoom session. Everyone sang Happy Birthday to me. It was nice to have a Zoom session where the entire family was on including brief appearances from my brother-in-laws. Then I finished up some videos and we watched Holy Thursday Mass together. Dinner was steak and hot wings. We cleared out some of our freezer space with some things that had been there a bit of time. Dinner was good and then after dinner we had some special treats of cookies and lemon squares. It was a ve...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00464 My kids are so very lucky. They have a great extended family. My in-laws sent them a basketball hoop so they could continue to keep active and safe during isolation. My parents dropped off a few things for us including a baby photo and some of my old books for the kids. My sisters Facetime with the kids and set up family Zoom sessions weekly. Also, My sister Tara has set up an additional Science curriculum for both kids and she works with both of them weekly. This is a poster that Andy made for his Ocean section, specifically coral reefs. We have giant paper from when Allison was an administrative assistant long ago. It has been kicking around the house and now is being used for all sorts of things. Andy enjoyed being able to make a this coral reef to show Auntie. Later tonight the kids and Allison watched the Dolphin Reef movie on Disney + while I had my Krav Class in the basement. I guess there was a moment when a shark appeared on screen and at the same moment...

I was provided a download code for a preview copy of Construction Simulator 3 for this review. The kids are home from school, or rather at home having school. When they have downtime and turn to their video games they have many options. Here’s one that I bet you didn’t think about, Construction Simulator 3. In this game you are in charge of a construction company and have to do many jobs using all sorts of big trucks and machines. For a kid who is fascinated with these types of machines this is a perfect game. You get to operate these machines while performing over 70 different challenges. These are also brand name vehicles from famous makers like Caterpillar, Liebherr, MAN, Palfinger, Bell, STILL, ATLAS and MEILLER Kipper, which have already made an appearance in the predecessors of Construction Simulator® 3, players will now be able to operate a number of officially licensed vehicles by newly added brands such as CASE, BOMAG, WIRTGEN, VÖGELE, HAMM and Bobcat. A veritable feast for fr...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00463 In 2012-2016 Toys to Life games were huge. There were Skylanders, Disney Infinity and LEGO Dimensions. I recently decided that these toys from those series were simply taking up space around here so I pulled them off the shelf and started using them again in my video lifestreams. I am starting with LEGO Dimensions and going to play through the game over the course of the next several weeks during my LEGO Lunchtime Livestreams. Twice a week will be building LEGO and twice a week will be playing LEGO Dimensions. I am learning that my toys from the series aren’t all working properly. So far three of the characters do not get recognized by the Toypad. Those are Gizmo, Stripe and Home J. Simpson. I haven’t tried all of them yet, I’m in the middle of downloading all the updates I need on the XBox. Maybe they will start working again, I am not sure. But we’ll see. I would hate to not be able to do the Gremlins world because I have no character to unlock it. I can still ...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00462 I don’t think it was until after I took this photo that I realized that the cat’s litter boxes were in the photo. I’m doing my Krav Maga classes in the basement because their is a heavy bag there that I can hit. I hate shadow boxing because I always feel so weird doing it. Hitting nothing but air just feels wrong. I know it is an essential skill to develop but if I can actually hit something, I’d much rather do that. I’m very fortunate that my dojo has continued to support the students through these Zoom classes and through virtual stripe tests and more. It was good to do an actual class and work out today. Andy had his own class right before mine. We did his in the living room because the basement is still quite messy. I mopped the floor to clean it up but it is going to need me to do that several more times to really clean it up. I’d like to paint the floor at some point too. However, I’m not going out shopping for floor paint for a concrete floor until this wh...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00461 Starting tomorrow when we go out we will have masks to cover up. Today Allison and the kids took out Grandma Eva’s Singer sewing machine. Eva sewed hers by hand and she aso ade Andy’s. Allison made mine and will be making some others. I trimmed my goatee way down today so that I would have a better fitting mask. It always looks weird when I trim it down. Eva and Allison both gave me the side eye when they saw it.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00460 On Tuesday the kids and Allison helped me shave my head. The next day I shaved it again and then I haven’t shaved it since. For going bald my hair certainly grows fast on both my face and head. I did not realize that the upkeep would be so much longer than when I just had short hair. If I want it to keep looking nice and smooth I’ve got to shave it and I’ve been doing it in the shower. Turn on the water, lather up. Turn off the water shave and try not to get any shaving cream in my eyes. Water on again and more lather. My showers are turning into very long affairs. Lots of stopping and starting, getting shocked by the cold water over and over. It is interesting. I’ll be experimenting with what razors get the best and closest shaves on my head.

The folks at Educational Insights and Learning Resources provided me with some products for free so that I could make some Easter Baskets for the kids. When I was at Toy Fair I got the idea to use the Playfoam Pluffle from Educational Insights as the Easter Grass in the kids’ baskets. Then I looked around at more fun items from Educational Insights and Learning Resources. These two great companies have a ton of fun educational products that parents will love. As I was mentally putting together the Easter Basket I knew that I wanted to include activities and toys and not just candy. Educational Insights has the Kanoodle line and they sent me the Kanoodle Flip came to include. This game comes in it’s own travel case so it can be taken anywhere to play. A fun and challenging game that each of the kids can play themselves. I also wanted some creative items and the Color by Playfoam line had a couple of fun options, a dragon and a unicorn. With this the kids can put pieces of Playfoam onto ...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00459 Our local Honey Dew Donuts has put together some decorate your own donut kits. I have been doing Donut Fridays with Allison and the kids. I run over there to the drive through get a couple of coffees and some donuts and bagels. A fun way to start the day. The kids really enjoyed them. We had a good day today. Lots of online things happening here. We started off with our morning welcome from the kids’ principal. Then I had a 40 minute chat with folks from my Krav Maga class led by our Sensei. Then I did my livestream and we also had a family Zoom session and we were joined by my grandmother, too. Earlier this week I sent her a webcam so that she could participate in the Zoom sessions. She was thrilled.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00458 I’ve been doing daily livestreams and some days they go better than others. Today’s had some technical difficulties right off the bat. Right as I was supposed to go live at noon the internet cut out completely. I took a few steps and got it back up and working. Luckily I had a smaller set to build. The set I built today was Jack’s Beach Buggy from the Hidden side series. You can see it below. I’ll soon be out of the Hidden Side sets and moving on to the Marvel super Heroes ones.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00457 Andy and I finished our stripe tests for Karate and Krav Maga. Because everything is being done form home now so was the stripe test. It was a little weird to do it from home but this morning Eva helped me with my gun defenses. I really felt weird about doing those with her but the alternative was to do them with no attacker and that felt even weirder. I submitted my test today and Andy’s yesterday. We each passed out tests. andy will be moving on to his Green Belt but I missed one stripe test prior to this one and did not earn my second stripe. So instead of earning out belts at the same time we’re going to be a bit out of sync. Yesterday I was showing Andy the requirements for stripe test before we went out to do them and we got a Facebook call from our Sensei. Sensei Wilson called us out of the blue. It was a really nice thing for him to do to check in on us. The entire school has been excellent in keeping everyone motivated while in isolation. They’re going t...