BenSpark Family Adventures

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...

Photo-A-Day #02597 Today was another Snow Day and that meant more shoveling and more snowblowing. This is our corner and I made sure to snowblow a path along the whole of our sidewalk minus one part that I just simply could not get through and was getting too tired to complete after doing 4+ hours and 3 refills of the gas tank. I did both neighbors again and after I had made my first pass the city came by and made their pass which meant I had to redo everything. Allison and Eva took care of taking the snow off the cars. It was warmer so the sun took care of more of the snow.  The bad. I scraped the heck out of the side of my car with the snowblower. Looks like I'm going to have to get more scratch stickers. My car has taken a major beating this winter. Seeing the city come by and fill in my whole path was tough but the guy driving the truck apologized and I know that cannot be helped. It simply cannot. I am glad that they did not plow in the corner like they usually do. I did get t...

Photo-A-Day #02596 We've had snow since 1978 but I think this is the first REAL legitimate Blizzard that we have seen since then. I've even seen reports that the amount of snow we got is more than that blizzard. I slept till about 12:30 and then went outside around 2pm. I was out snow blowing and shoveling until about 5pm. The kids and allison came to help me out as well. We dug a path to the garage so I could use the snowblower.  Took this one at 3:43am Snow at 6:38am. The Side Porch. Backyard at 12:48pm Clearing a bit of the sidewalk. Front of the house.