BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #02603 I don't know why I look so annoyed or mad in this photo. I shouldn't be, things with the play are going well. We had our first full on run through yesterday and tonight we had a full dress of the show. It went very well. I mixed up a couple of things but overall it was good. I'm at 98% of having all of my lines ready to go. There area  couple that I either am not getting the exact wording for or I am mixing up when I say them. Just a couple but I keep working on it. We also had professional photos taken tonight. So that was a little nerve wracking since the photographer was taking photos all throughout the play. It sort of threw me off in one bit of it but wasn't too terrible. His photos are always great.

Photo-A-Day #02602 Andy has been getting into making Wax seals. They have learned how to use multiple colors to make very special seals. So I picked up a wax seal of a wolf and I asked Andy to make them with a metallic blue and white. They are for the people who are part of The Winter Wolf. Andy did an excellent job on them. Today we had the start of Tech Week for The Winter Wolf. We started with doing the technical queue run and at the intermission point lunch arrived so we ate lunch and then did the tech and queue run of the second act. Overall things went well. Once our tech runthrough was done we did it again with all the tech queues. We made some mistakes but overall I think it was going well. Tomorrow night we do the run through in full costume with a photographer. Then we do two more days of run throughs with Wednesday the performance for The Masons.

Photo-A-Day #02601 The day started poorly but ended up excellent. This morning I got off work and went to bed. I passed out with my phone in my hand and awoke an hour later. The house stunk. I knew what had happened. The shit pipe int he basement had overflowed once again. Luckily it wasn't a lot. It was more than enough to put a stink throughout the house. I had to run to Lowe's to pick up some heavy duty main line drain clearer and also get some baking soda at Walmart. So I did not get to sleep until well after 12. I then slept for 2 and a half hours and got up because I now have to find a solution to this problem. A long term solution. Allison and Andy were at the METG (Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild) HS Festival 2026 Preliminary Round of one act plays. Eva's school was performing Around the World in 80 Days. She made many of the costumes and she and her team won for Best Costume Design. They now continue on to the Semi-Finals in two weeks. I can't see the s...

Photo-A-Day #02600 The ice cream that I made on Wednesday.  I picked up our ice cream yesterday and well, I ate my ice cream before I took a picture yesterday. Today I have a nice photo. A soft lavender color to the ice cream because of the black raspberry and cherry juice. It also contains some hot honey, can't taste it, Nutella, can't taste it, peanut butter, also can't taste it. It also has toffee pieces, peanuts and oreos. The fruit flavors are subtle. It tis rather enjoyable overall. I have a feeling that at some point I'm going to get a big bit of something that I didn't mix well. I have many ideas to make another batch but this one will take a while to finish. Plus we have Andy's batch. That is a very honey heavy one.

Photo-A-Day #02599 When Allison and Eva went tot he Transformers Store in London they picked up a Funko Bitty Pop! Retro Toys set of Transformers. The way that Funko did these sets was that they had 4 different Bitty Pop! Retro Toys sets, each with a different Hasbro Retro Toys Theme. There was Transformers, G.I. Joe, Mr. Potato Head and Board Games like Monopoly and Operation. However, in these sets of four figures there was one figure that was a mystery figure. The mystery figure may or may not match the overall theme of the set. Int his case it does not match because I got Lite Brite with my Transformers. I didn't have the heart to tell Eva that I already had this set on my wall of Transformers. She was so happy to have found something fun for me in London that was Transformers themed. And they are very cool. I opened this one because I have an unopened one on my wall. I didn't know about how they worked the "mystery figure". So now I am on the lookout for Soundwav...

Photo-A-Day #02598 I had wanted to do an ice cream making class with andy during February vacation and well, since this has been an extended vacation because of all the snow days we got our chance to go today. An ice cream shop local to us, Frisbie's offers ice cream making classes. It is more of an experience than a class but it is very fun none the less. We are here with the ice cream sundaes that we got after we made our own ice cream. Because our ice cream will take a day to freeze properly they give us some of their ice cream to enjoy after class. I say give but we definitely paid for the experience. The cost was $75 per person. I think that the store probably took home 75% of that fee in profit after all was said and done. So they poured a bag of ice cream mix into the machine to mix, add air and freeze a bit. We each got a large tub and added that base ice cream. Then we could mix in our own base as well as other items. I had wanted to make a strawberry oreo ice cream but th...