BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #02782 On Eva's last night before move in day we watched the movie Wayne's World. Eva was not a fan. Andy seemed to find it funny but Allison and I were rolling at the time capsule that was Wayne's World. We were pretty low key today. I had to work at the Pretzel Factory 12:30-5:30 and when I came home we had a quick dinner and were off to a marriage prep meeting. I brought along some pretzels for the group and they were very happy. When we came home we started watching Wayne's World. Allison and Eva had already packed up the car so we did not have to do that. I did bring Eva an Oreo milkshake that I made at work. We are doing milkshakes now. And pizzas. What will next week bring, probably frozen custard replacing the ice cream. Every week, something new.

Photo-A-Day #02781 Forty years ago a toy company broke the hearts of a generation of kids when they killed off a beloved character in a major movie just to clear up shelf space for a new cast of characters. The movie was The Transformers: The Movie. In it the leader of the heroic Autobots, Optimus Prime, is killed and as he dies he hands the mantle off to the new generation of Autobots. It was crushing to me and many others. Forty years later and Hasbro has been having an "Apology Tour" for traumatizing us kids. They are re-releasing the movie into theaters in the next two weeks with all new footage. There was a special concert by bands from the cartoons of Transformers, G.I. JOE and Jem and the Holograms at San Diego Comicon.  But before the release of the movie the universe decides to kick us Gen Xers one more time with the death of actor Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime for the past forty years.  This has been a week of big deaths including Dolly Parton and Tim Cur...

Photo-A-Day #02780 I was at McDonald's before work and I had parked my car and when I came back out there was a white care parked right next to mine and it had a Decepticon sticker on the front and one on the window. I had to laugh because of my Autobot stickers and other items. I sat in the car reading my comics and waited for the driver of the Decepticon car to come back. When he did he looked about my age, wearing a Top Gun t-shirt and I shouted over, "I had to wait to see the Decepticon driver." He looked over and then realized that I had Autobot stickers on my car and laughed. Today at work we got a new kid that comes in twice a week. My boss and his wife signed up for a program where a local high school student who has special needs comes and works in the store to get some experience while they are evaluated to see if they are able to handle working in a real world scenario. Our last kid had zero personality and needed guidance for everything they did. Nice enough k...

Photo-A-Day #02767 This morning we took the kids to First Watch for breakfast. They were not impressed. The place was really loud, they didn't quite enjoy their meals and that made for a rather poor experience. While we were there though we talked about the things that we'd like to watch together (movies) before Eva goes off to college. We settled on watching Stand By Me as the first of a series of movies we'll watch over the next few weeks.  I worked at The Pretzel factory today until closing. Then I ran a bunch of pretzels over to America's Best Defense. I had put out a call earlier in the week for people who might want a delivery of pretzels. Sensei Howard replied and I got him on the list for tonight. Last night I went to the North Attleboro Fire Station and they practically tackled me for them. Both nights someone did not pick up their 2 Good 2 Go order so I had multiple bags of pretzels to share.  When I got home we watched Stand By Me. I think both kids really en...

Photo-A-Day #02761 Today I took Andy and their girlfriend Jazzy to see Spider-Ma: Brand New Day. It was a fantastic movie. So much fun to watch. Andy did their research, too. Andy watched all of the original Spider-Man movies with Tobey Maguire, the two reboots with Andrew Garfield and the 3 with Tom Holland before seeing the 4th movie starring Tom Holland. So many great cameos, movie tie-ins and iconic comic moments. After the movie we went to get Ramen for dinner. The bowls were HUGE! It was a great meal and it was a lot of fun to spend time with Andy and Jazzy. They are very cute together.

Photo-A-Day #02749 Dunkin Donuts put out a special Cape Cod themed tumbler. Allison and I have been searching for it since the start of the Summer. Today Allison and Andy went down the Cape to pick up Eva and their friend, Max to go and see the Hadestown Pro Shot. A Pro Shot is professional filming of a broadway play. Allison and Eva both love Hadestown and andy enjoys Greek Mythology so everyone wins.  Allison went to about five Dunkins today and finally found the tumbler at a small shop. She was quite excited to finally have it. It is a cute one. Lots of fun Cape Cod details on it, too.

Photo-A-Day #02701 Today I went to see the new movie : The Masters of The Universe. This was the new He-Man movie and it was really entertaining. I never had any of the toys while growing up but my best friend Ryan had all of them and I played He-Man with him when I was a kid.It was a fun movie to see and I really enjoyed it. In the afternoon I received the rewards from the latest Kickstarter that I backed. These were from author S.L. Rowland. These books are special editions of his Tales of Aedrea series. Cozy adventure books and I've read two of them that I really enjoyed. I have not read the third and fourth ones but I now have the 3rd and another kickstarter is coming for the fourth that will be done in this very special edition way.

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 #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 #02643 At work tonight I decided to do osme movie watching and started with the 2025 movie The Running Man with Glen Powell and then once that was over I went for the 1987 one with Arnold Schwarzenegger. We can now make popcorn at work again. So I had some as I watched the first movie. Of course, 1987 was peak Arnold movie time. He was in many movies over the 80's including doing both Predator and The Running Man in 1987. Interestingly enough Jesse Ventura was in both movies with him. I really enjoyed the original movie but the remake was very entertaining as well.

Photo-A-Day #02642 My sister, Tara sent me a gift card for Amazon and I used it to buy myself a fun LEGO set. I picked up the Toothless figure from How To Train Your Dragon. It was a great build. I made it while I watched the crew of the Artemis II return to Earth. It was amazing to watch. Really was something to see. I watched until the very end when the crew made it to the med bay of the naval ship.

Photo-A-Day #02590 Today I took andy to the movies. We went to see Goat. The promo behind us is not for Goat. It is for Hoppers. They had no standee for Goat though. The movie was awesome. Great story, amazing animation and some great voice work. Andy rates this movie higher than Zootopia. they must have liked it because they sent a rather long text tot heir friends about it. Eva does the same thing when a movie or show or book gets her in her feelings.  After the movie we went over to Savers and to Michaels. We donated some books of Andy's after they had cleaned their room at the beginning of the week. I cleared out some of mine and some clothes. At Michael's we looked for some Christmas stuff for the play. I found a tree skirt and some ornaments. Then we went over to Stop and Shop to do some food shopping. We got a few treats for Andy and their friend because they are having friends over for movies and pizza tomorrow night. Tonight I had rehearsal and it went well. We did lin...

Photo-A-Day #02572 The other day when we had a snow day and spent the evening watching The Lord of The Rings Eva and Andy really enjoyed the movie and wanted to continue watching the rest of the movies in the trilogy. Allison was out for the night and the kids decided to have a movie night, just the two of them. they watched The Two Towers, the second movie in the trilogy and plan to watch the third movie tomorrow night. It was really nice to see the two of them enjoying each other's company and a movie together. This afternoon we had a Zoom birthday party for Mem. She and Grandfather are down in Florida and Tara set up the Zoom so we could all get together to wish her a happy birthday.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02568 Today we enjoyed a snow day. We got a about 15 inches of snow overnight and through the day. I finished work and slept for a couple of hours and when I got hup Andy, Allison and Eva had all gone out to shovel to the driveway and try to get over to Joanie's driveway to shovel her out. Luckily her other neighbor had already gone ahead and shoveled her out. I got up around 10:30 and went out and did the snowblower on the sidewalks and our driveway and back patio.  After the snow we had lunch and then played Andy's new board game. It is called Hues and Cues. The point is to describe a color in one or two words and that allows the players to guess which color you are trying to describe. Then players can score points by guessing the correct color or by being close. Andy is great at being able to put color hues together but they did not end up winning the game. That went to me. After the game we decided to watch a movie. At first we were going to watch Spaceball...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02508 Today was Thanksgiving. We had a great time with our family enjoying a great meal and time together. Last night we kicked off Thanksgiving by watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles. The kids enjoyed it and I really liked seeing it again especially after watching "I Like Me" the John Candy documentary. After our dinner we had some time to relax. I showed Mom and Dad Eugene Levy's show "The Reluctant Traveller". Dad and Mom got a kick out of it like I thought that they would. The show is really fun for everyone.  Each thanksgiving Allison gets the kids come sparkling cider. The kids get fancy and put it in our very fancy wine glasses. They end up toasting repeatedly as they refill their drinks. It is very cute of them to do it. We got some family photos after dinner and before dessert. Dinner was from Firefly's and it was a really good one. We got a turkey breast and a couple of pints of brisket. Then we got mashed potatoes, corn, sweet...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02491 For the Day off we decided on a family movie night to watch the new Frankenstein movie from Guillermo del Toro. Eva was the one who suggested it. We were having dinner and she said that she wanted to watch the movie and I had been waiting for it as well. Allison and Andy also wanted to see it and since no one had already gone ahead and watched it on their own we made a movie night out of it.  Eva read Frankenstein in English class last year and I was in the People vs. Frankenstein because Eva had been reading the book and I noticed that ACT was doing the show. Then I read the actual book and after watching the movie I am very happy at how well this movie followed the book and the themes of the book. They even got certain scenes very right. del Toro is a great director. I told Eva that she used to like an animated series called Trollhunters that del Toro created.  The movie did have some gory parts but the kids handled it well. Even andy, although ...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02383 Tonight I went to see The Fantastic Four with my friend, Frank. Frank and I have been friends since college. We don’t see each other often enough, though. We only live a half hour away from each other but it takes forever for us to coordinate and do something. this time, however, we had made a plan to see The Fantastic Four when it came out. Frank loves movies and so do I so this was perfect. We met up at BJ’s Brew House for dinner and great conversation. We caught up, laughed commiserated and genuinely enjoyed spending time together. I always enjoy conversations with Frank. After the movie we made plans to catch up again in the next couple of months. We plan to go see a Sunday Matinee of And Then There Were None, the next play at ACT.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02373 I came down to the Cape later today because I went and saw Superman before I headed down. I slept a few hours and then went over to the movie theater to see Superman. I didn’t have high expectations for the movie but I knew that James Gunn was in charge of it so I knew it was in good hands. The movie did not disappoint. It was the best DC movie since the Dark Knight, the last one I really enjoyed. The movie was bright and fun and had an excellent soundtrack. I laughed and I certainly teared up more than once. Such a fun movie to see. When I arrived at the Cape my niece and my sister’s dog were sitting on the bench at the table and I was able to catch a very happy expression on both of them.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02370 Allison and Eva headed home today because Eva has senior photos tomorrow. So, Andy and I had some time for ourselves and I decided to take him to the movies to see How To Train Your Dragon. This was the live action remake of the animated movie. It was really good. We went to DJ’s for wings before the show and then split some popcorn at the show. I had a bit of it and it did not spike my blood sugar so I was happy with that. Andy enjoyed the movie and dinner. After dinner we went over to Shaw’s so I could get some cream for my iced coffee. Andy saw the Pokemon kiosk and asked for a pack. He has decided to get back into Pokemon for a bit. I have all his old Pokemon stuff because I kept it for him. Might be fun to start playing that again together.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02307 I finally got to see the Thunderbolts movie this morning. I was going to go yesterday but I had forgotten that Andy had a physical. I did have a ticket for yesterday that I got with a discount but never got to use it. I considered going to see part of it yesterday but that didn’t make much sense. I did see it today and I liked it very much. I did get spoiled about a couple of things, one from the Internet and the other from Marvel marketing. Neither really ruined my enjoyment of the movie, more of an annoyance than anything else. I’m really looking forward to seeing Fantastic Four next month, too. I hope that is done just as well.