BenSpark Family Adventures

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00741 Today is Allison’s birthday and after an early dinner from Chub’s Blue Pig BBQ we went for a family walk around the park. On the way back I noticed that the shadows were super long stretching out ahead of us. I was walking next to Eva and we were joking around how our shadows were crossing the street well before we did. The image looked cool so I waited till Allison and Andy had turned the corner and then took a photo. I started thinking about the meaning of the term “Casts a Long Shadow” which is to have considerable influence over people or events. This can often have a negative meaning but I like to think that it can be positive, too. When I personally think about the people who have had influence over me in my life and who despite being gone still do, there are more positives than negatives. So I hope that one day my influence over my own children and the events of their lives will be a good things and not thought of as negative in any way. Of course, I...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00740 Eva has been finding her own voice as of late. She’s finding more of her own music suited to her tastes. She’s also rediscovering things that she has had in her life from a very early age. Some of those things are a set of toys that I got her several years ago. They are female super heroes based on principals and qualities instead of specific powers. When I first learned about the I Am Elemental action figures I knew that they would be the perfect action figures for Eva. The company made them to have real world bodies and be focused more on characteristics and qualities than being characters themselves. The first set was called the Elements of Courage. The Courage set includes: Bravery, Energy, Honesty, Industry, Enthusiasm, Persistence, and Fear. I funded the original I Am Elemental: Elements of Courage set back in 2013 or 2014 on Kickstarter. They arrived in time for Christmas 2014 and that is when Eva received her set. They came in a collector’s lunchbox...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00739 When I was a kid I had this vintage pedal car fire truck. I mean, it was brand new at the time and now it is vintage. It was made out of metal and had little ladders on either side. It has been sitting in my parent’s basement for years now. When they moved it became mine again. The kids are booth too big for it and it does not work properly anymore. It needs to be restored if anyone is to actually use it in the future. That is not something I have any interest in doing. I have no grand aspirations of my grandchildren riding around in it some day. I just don’t. I enjoyed it as a kid and it was fun. But it is time for it to move on. I listed it on Facebook and found a buyer. A young man who does have aspirations of refurbishing it. Great. I am glad that someone will continue to enjoy this and put in the work to restore it.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00738 Funko sent me this Ash Hot Topic Exclusive Funko Pop! figure for free to check out and review. Opinions are my own. I was in college the first time I saw Army of Darkness starring Bruce Campbell. I wasn’t so sure about watching it because it was part of the Evil Dead series and I am not a horror movie kind of guy. This movie was different, however. While it did have some crazy scary looking characters it was not horror in the way that I had known horror movies. It wasn’t a slasher movie or something like that. This move was fun and funny as all get out because of Bruce Campbell’s performance as Ash.  So, in Evil Dead 2 Ash gets his hand infected with Evil so he hacks it off and attaches a chainsaw to it to fight the evil. In Army of Darkness he is pulled into either a another dimension or into the past. I am not sure which. He’s a man out of time and fish out of water but it doesn’t faze him at all. He rolls with it and makes a bunch of mistakes and ul...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00737 Eva got Immortals Fenyx Rising for Christmas. I had seen that a video game was coming that was similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in that it was open world play where you had to solve puzzles and perform feats while fighting tons of different monsters. This game is set in the world of the Greek gods and you play as a shield bearer who becomes a hero as he or she (depending upon how you create your character) helps the gods against Typhon, one of the Titans. Typhon has stolen the essences of some of the gods and it is up to you to help get them back. The story is narrated by Prometheus (the guy who stole fire and gave it to us but was chained to a rock to have his liver eaten by a raven daily for all eternity) as he tells the story to Zeus. Eva has been really enjoying this game. She likes the puzzles and the open world. She’s picking up on everything really quickly, too. I had been looking forward to the game as well but it is a one player g...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00736 I’ve got to hand it to our kids. This past year was a rough one with so many changes in the world and so much changed at school. The kids do a hybrid model of schooling where they are home one day and at school the next. Andy and Eva have both settled into this new model and are both doing very well. Eva has always been pretty self sufficient and so I am not surprised at her response to the changes. She does her work and spends a lot of time getting school work or projects done each day. There are many projects that she continues to work on. Andy has really impressed me this year. He’s gotten all of his schoolwork done. He gets his Zoom classes set up and works very hard on projects. He’s even doing more artistic projects lately because he just loves creating with clay. He takes care of getting his own lunches most of the time. When he does need help it is with things that he wants to cook like mac and cheese or his favorite, an omelet. He was on a HUGE ome...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00735 Torunn has found a new spot to sit. We moved a new couch and chair into the house recently and she claimed the chair. Well, she claimed the chair, I claimed the chair, and so did Eva. And yes, there have been times when we have all tried to claim it at once. Eva gats all feisty now that she has some self defense moves so she often gets the chair. Having the new chair instead of the loveseat in this spot really makes the room bigger. Speaking of the loveseat and old couch. Those were picked up by the city today. We’d worn those out. They didn’t owe us anything. Hopefully we will not tear through this new set of furniture as quickly. I’ve already put a ban on eating in the living room because of the kids and their “woodchipper” tendencies.