BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #02693 The other day at Eva's graduation party my sister Tara commented on how beautiful our Peonies were. I was like, what peonies? We did not plant any peonies. They must have been planted by the previous owner and I've never quite noticed them before. We get a bunch of different flowers popping up from time to time, ones we never planted. I did start planting a few wildflowers around the house and hope that they fill in some spots. I also want to plant some creeping thyme and eventually cover the whole front yard in plants like that rather than grass. We'll see if I can.

Photo-A-Day #02692 Today we celebrated Eva and their graduation from High School. We got food from Chub's Blue Pig BBQ as well as some burgers from Chartley Country Store. I have a ton of them left over and frozen, too. I bought 20, cooked 4 and two were eaten. W weren't sure if people would rather have that than the amazing BBQ of Chubb's. I also picked up a Crowd Pleaser of pretzels from Phill Pretzel Factory and a couple of their sweet dips. Allison made a salad and got a treat platter form BJ's as well as a half sheet cake. We had Eva's aunts Tara and Shelby there along with Uncle Erik and cousin Kylie. Great-aunt Donna came and so did Great-Uncle Richard. Our neighbor Joannie came over and so did Great-Aunt Corrine. Mem and Grandfather came to the party and so did Eva's friends Aviva and Ollie. Eva's theater director, Mrs. Strunin came to visit as well. Andy invited their girlfriend, Jazzy over to meet everyone too.  Before the party a package arrived f...

Photo-A-Day #02691 For the past 12 years Eva has had to follow a dress code and has had to have natural colored hair. Well, they graduated yesterday and today they were finally able to color their hair. Eva went with purple under their natural hair color. Overall it is pretty subtle and looks great on them. Time to live your authentic life, Eva! 

Photo-A-Day #02690 Today was Eva's High School Graduation. It was a wonderful celebration. We started off with the Baccalaureate Mass. That was from about 10:00 - 1:00 or so. Very long celebration but was really nice. Eva got to see many of her teachers afterwards and each one said some wonderful things to her. Her first year chem teacher is actually a woman who was a year ahead of me at Feehan.  After the Mass we went to the Doran Center for Eva's Senior Art show. Eva had some lovely peicves up to show. There was one piece missing and it was dead center of her display. We are not sure what happened to it either. Hopefully it will turn up. After the art show Mem and Grandfather went back to the Blackinton and we headed to SMSH so Eva would do a walk through to visit with her grade school teachers. We went home and I crashed out with a nap. For the graduation we had purchased a bunch of plastic ponchos because there was a chance of rain and we did not want to take the chance of ...

Photo-A-Day #02689 Tonight we went to The Blackinton Inn for dinner with Mem and Grandfather to celebrate Eva's upcoming graduation. I met up with everyone after work at the Pretzel Factory. I was there to work the closing. It was a good night at work.  Earlier in the day Eva had Grandparents day with Mem and Grandfather. They came up last night to stay at The Blackinton so that they were ready for this morning. Eva had a nice time with her grandparents showing them the school and enjoying the activities that the school had set up for them. While they were at their event I went to work (the full time job) to pick up my old laptop. They cleared it and reset it to that I could have it back to use personally. On the way back from there so that I could go to work I went and got my comics and I also stopped by target and while there I found some gifts for Eva for Graduation and I also went to Lowes and got her a tool kit. My dad had done that for Tara when Tara went off to college....

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.

Photo-A-Day #02681 I have been going through all of the Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobooks. They are very entertaining. Before I even started in on those I pre-ordered the graphic novel. That arrived today and it goes through the first 20 or so chapters of the first book. It was a good adaptation of the novel. On the surface Dungeon Crawler Carl is a silly set of books but they are way deeper than just some unlikely hero and his ex-girlfriend's cat trying to survive a world dungeon. There will be 10 books in total and eight have already been released. I am on Book 7 now.

Photo-A-Day #02680 I'm on some new medication and I am attempting to take in some more fiber. I learned about these Shameless Snacks that have very little sugar and lots of fiber. They taste great and I got a big box of them so that I can have a bag each day. I choose only sour ones and they are all very good.

Photo-A-Day #02679 Allison found my this giant jar of Chili crisp. She knows how much I love this in my soups and more. I've tried many different versions of this. My favorite is a garlic Chili Crisp that I find at Eugene Henry's on the Cape but that is a rather small jar for $14. This one was $9.99. 

Photo-A-Day #02678 Our family was featured in the Bishop Feehan magazine called Cornerstone. They interviewed me, my mom, my sister Shelby and Eva. They interviewed a few other families as well about multi generational Feehan families. We each talked about our experiences at the school and the things that linked us to our time there like the theater. Eva and I did the most in theater except for my Uncle Jim. Uncle Jim, Aunt Luann and Uncle Richard were all mentioned in the article, too. I like how they put little family trees on each of the articles. There was also an article about the arts at Feehan and how the Choir, Band and Theater all had great events in March and Eva was mentioned by name.

Photo-A-Day #02677 Today at The Pretzel Factory they were twisting pretzels while I was there. When it came time to clean the Stringer they were finishing up and there as a a good pile of dough. I asked if I could try my hand at making something. I tried to make a mortar board for a graduation. It came out looking like a fat stingray.

Photo-A-Day #02676 Tonight was the induction ceremony for the National Junior Honor Society. Andy was inducted. We are very proud of how well Andy has done in school and he's excited for High School.  We've all been reading The Outsiders in the house. Eva read it first and then Andy and then me. Allison is reading it now and once she is done we have the movie from 1983 to watch. Andy's ELA class is now working on the Outsiders and from Andy it seems like his teacher didn't quite read it or get it. It was funny listening to Andy and Eva talking about the book and how major things about the book were being presented to Andy incorrectly but he knows the score so he's gonna do well with this book in school.

Photo-A-Day #02675 Today was Eva's last day at high school. She does have one more exam tomorrow but otherwise she is finished. I can't believe how quickly this all went. We're only a couple months out from college, too. She's been doing a bunch of things all on her own like planning trips with her friends. She even bought a couple tickets to a show near her college for October in plans to go with someone she makes friend with in college. That is great for her. She's also making a couple of online purchases and has finally started using a bit of her Summer Job money to enjoy it. I'm really proud about the concert ticket purchase that she made.

Photo-A-Day #02674 Andy had a fundraiser through school where he had to sell Double Good Popcorn. This stuff was expensive but it was actually really tasty popcorn. My favorite was the Chi - Town Chow Down because it is the mix of caramel and Cheese popcorn. But they also had one that was caramel popcorn with cheese flavor on it. That was really good stuff. 

Photo-A-Day #02673 The raised bed has been filled up and the seedlings that we started in the mini greenhouses have been planted. I put in some stakes to be around the squash and zucchini. We'll try and grow them vertically off the ground a bit.

Photo-A-Day #02672 Today was Mother's Day. I had to sleep but the kids took care of Allison. Andy went to Church in the morning with Allison. We celebrated with a nice meal of swordfish and steak that I grilled for dinner.

Photo-A-Day #02671 I have a new item on my car, it is a solar powered Autobot symbol. I put it on my gas tank door. It lights up at night and goes from red to green and other colors. 

Photo-A-Day #02670 I brought a mess of pretzels in to work tonight. I also brought in one of each of the dips. Yesterday I was saying that I had to try them out and today I gave each a shot. A small amount on this pretzel so that I can speak better of the flavors that I actually like and can recommend to people. I brought them in for my cousins, Shaun. We also shared them with everyone who is upstairs in the building. There are still a ton left for him to take home.

Photo-A-Day #02669 This is our Dip Zone at The Pretzel Factory. I try and make sure that it is always filled with all the correct items. We needed to make a bunch of them each day and I like to organize them in the walk-in when I have some time. There are many flavors. I have not tried them all because they are very sweet. I do recommend the Salted Caramel one and Cinnamon is good. I like all the mustards, too.

Photo-A-Day #02668 I went and picked up my comic books today and it included this Graded comic that I won fromt he raffle on Free Comic Book Day. 9.8 is crazy high too. I'll never read this comic or take it out of the package. I'll probably look to sell it since I don't collect this series.

Photo-A-Day #02667 Tonight was Cinco De Mayo. I made some more Birria meat. I went to Chartley Country Store and picked up a 4.5 lb chuck roast and did it up with the Birria Bomb and the Instant Pot. Allison got some Margarita Mix and I had my one for the year. The consume was good and so were the tacos. Very nice night of food.

Photo-A-Day #02666 With the tree in front of the house having been removed we had to do something to get it looking nicer. Allison and I got some candy corn shrubs to plant on the corner. I also picked up some wood chips to spread around there and I'll have Andy do some weeding soon to get it all looking good. I'm also thinking of adding a big half Whiskey Barrel to the top of the stump and fill it with some flowers. At least till the shrubs grow in and get larger to cover the stump.

Photo-A-Day #02665 Today Allison and I did the Marriage PRep Course for Transfiguration of the Lord Parish. Last night we went to a fun dinner with everyone pictured above plus the team. It was a nice meal and everyone who attended was really nice. We had a whole day of talks and fun exercises to show the engaged couples that they have an additional support system with regards to their marriage. I ran out at lunch and picked up a Crowd Pleaser set of pretzels for everyone. They loved them. 

Photo-A-Day #02664 Today was Free comic Book Day. I made sure that I got over to The Laughing Shield comics to pick up my subscriptions but also some of the free comics. I had intended only o get two free comics, the Energon Universe special and the Dungeon Crawler Carl comic. However, a few other ones caught my eye and I grabbed those, too. We had a limit of 10 comics per person and so I got 8 total. There was a Supernatural one as well as The Greatest American Hero which actually looks very interesting and a fun one to continue with. I have been watching the old episodes on Amazon Prime from time to time. I also picked up a set of comic books because they had special covers. I had been eyeing them for months and today they were 20% off so I pulled the trigger on those. They were special covers of G.I. JOE featuring 5 of the Dreadnoks. I thought that they would be nice additions to my collection.

Photo-A-Day #02663 Today was Eva's Senior Prom. She's been working on her outfit for a very long time and she and her friend Aviva matched up with each other perfectly. They were so excited for the event. I picked Eva up from school today and took her to lunch at K.C.'s Burger Bar for lunch before taking her to get her hair cut. I then took her home so she could get ready. Eva even put on some very pretty fake nails for the event. Everything she did with her outfit matched up so well from makeup to nails and also wearing Allison's wedding jewelry (necklace and earrings). Aviva arrived around 5 O'Clock. She had made special bouquets for she and Eva.  They were very beautiful and Eva was thrilled. The two young ladies looked fantastic in their outfits. We took photos in the backyard and also some under the trellises. We also took some by the Rhododendron bush. I wish that it had been in bloom but there was nothing in bloom around. The nice tree int eh backyard bloomed...