BenSpark.com is about my life through photography. Each image is a gateway to a story about my daily life. Occasionally funny, inspiring, interesting or creative BenSpark.com is real life in photos. With over 4200 consecutive days and many different cameras BenSpark.com has documented images from the mundane to the amazing.
It is going to be a slow process to get everything moved there because I have to do it individually. I have about 20,000 posts. I’ll be getting rid of some junk from the past that had nothing to do with the blog or my family. For the most part I am moving it to Blogger because it is free and I do not use this blog as a business any longer. So it makes no sense to pay for it month in and month out. But I will have to pay while I am moving things. There is no quick way to do it the way I want it done.
We had a wonderful New Year’s Eve today. I had the night off from work so I could be home to celebrate. Allison told me that our good friends, the Prestons had invited us over for a some drinks and appetizers. Allison made the Fried Pickle Egg Rolls for an appetizer and they were spectacular! We found the recipe online and I was going to make them but I ended up sleeping the entire day away because of work the night before. They are pickles that have had the middles scooped out and then filled with cream cheese, shredded cheese and bacon! So good!
Our time with the PRestons was wonderful. They are always such gracious hosts and we have a lot of fun with them. The kids adore their girls and this time there were even more kids to play with. Another couple was there with their 4 kids. So, all 8 of the children played together. Sure, there were some events but for the most part everyone got along really well. They even played together on some instruments and had a little music jam along with Aaron on his guitar. It was a great way to welcome in the New Year.
Andrew chose his outfit. Then I saw the wood stove and I had to get him to pose there. He looks like he’s about to work at his dad’s general store.
I got out of work this morning and the weather hurt my face. I live in a place where the weather hurts my face. I had also come off a twelve hour overnight shift… so this is the face I make when it is hurt by the weather and I have to warm up my car and stay longer. Tomorrow morning I warm it up earlier.
Before Christmas we received a huge box from The Toy Insider because I am part of their Parent Advisory Panel. In the box was a really large LEGO set. It was the Coast Guard Head Quarters set and it came with two boats, a helicopter and five minifigs plus a couple of buildings and a shark. I wasn’t sure if we’d be ready to do this together but I was wrong. Andrew has progressed leaps and bounds in his small motor skills and he can put together LEGO sets really well now. It was also very enjoyable to build with him. We took turns with every other page and when he started to wander a bit I got to build more. He’s able to do a lot of the building, too.
Next I will have to work with Eva on her LEGO friends set.
Tonight on the built from Bricks Livestream Brian and I faced off building two different LEGO Technic vehicles. These vehicles have pull back motors and they crash into each other to send their engines flying. It seems that only my engine went flying, though. Our livestream is getting better and better. Brian has been learning how to use OBS to its fullest potential through some very useful videos. then he made some excellent backgrounds for the show and there are other things for us to work on but we will add in things slowly but surely as we continue to progress.
who won the challenge? You’ll have to watch the video to see.
For the past week we have had a beautiful Mazda 6 Grand Touring sedan to drive around. It was red and was a perfect Christmas sleigh for us to do all of our holiday events. We were loaned the car to use for the week so that we could use it in the real work and tell you about our experiences. These are our opinions.
After driving the Mazda 6 for a week and doing all of our last minute Christmas errands we had a day where we could take a road trip and really get a good feel for the car. So, we decided that we would drive down to the Cape to visit my grandparents. We hadn’t seen them during the holiday and so we called them up and planned to come down, pick up lunch and have a visit. Before we went to their place we stopped at my parent’s house and picked up a few things for another upcoming trip. It was there that I decided to take the above photo. Hopefully, it doesn’t show much of the road salt from driving in New England after it snows. This is always a problem for me when I check out a car because they always get a day into the loan and the snow, sand and salt comes. It is hard to take good photos when the region’s weather is out to thwart you. Continue reading Holiday Road Tripping in the Mazda 6 Grand Touring→
Santa brought us a great family gift. We got the Crayola Family Escapes Group Coloring set. This is a nice set of 6 different scenes that are broken into 4 separate pieces of paper. The idea behind this is that each member of the family color one part of the picture and then put them all together. Eva finished hers first and then she went on to color more in another book. Andrew colored one small part of his piece and he was done. He went on to play with his kinetic rock toy instead. I finished mine as we watched The Boss Baby on Netflix. Allison finished hers later tonight as we watched Outlander.
It was a quiet day to stay at home. Andrew and I began working on is giant LEGO set of Coast Guard boats and a helicopter. We took turns together building and he time passed quickly but it was so fun just to be there building with him. He stopped on a few occasions to hug me and tell me that he enjoyed building with me. It was a nice day.
Our Christmas morning was a magical one this year. We got up around 6 before the kids. The one day a year where they are not dragging us out of bed. I thought that we were going to be waking Andrew up, but he wandered down. We had our cinnamon buns and opened gifts. the kids were very excited to give us the gifts that they picked up during Christmas Shoppe. We gave their their gifts and they were so excited. Neither kid said anything about how few gifts were under the tree. It was alight year this year because we are doing something very special that we will reveal below.
We also had FaceTime Christmas with Allison’s parents. They send up a box of gifts for everyone before Christmas and then we open them while we do FaceTime together.
I had a call scheduled for Mickey and Minnie to talk to Eva and Andrew and tell them that they were going to be going on a Disney Cruise. You see, I was invited to go to Disney Social Media Moms Celebration in February. It is a conference where I can take the family along and it is in Walt Disney World and also on the Disney Cruise. We’ll be sailing on the Disney Dream for 3 days. I also set up three cameras to record the kids’ reactions. However, the GoPro on my head wasn’t pointed the right way so I didn’t get much footage out of that one. I had better learn how to use that before we go on the trip. The phone call did not come in when scheduled so I tried to make the call come immediately. It still didn’t come so I had the kids come in to the kitchen where I had something very special set up. You can see it in the video below.
So, there is this very popular game called Subway Surfers. This is one of those endless runner games. I have not played it before. I’m not a big fan of that genre of game but it is extremely popular despite what I think about it. So popular in fact that with 1.6 billion downloads to its name, Subway Surfers is one of the most successful mobile game of its genre, being crowned the number one most downloaded game across all platforms of 2017. In Subway Surfers, dash as fast as you can! Dodge the oncoming trains! Help Jake, Tricky & Fresh escape from the grumpy Inspector and his dog. How long can you keep surfing in this slick, exciting endless runner? Available on Google Play, Apple’s App store, Windows 10 and Amazon.
The game has gained so much popularity that is going to become an animated series. I have a teaser of the show below.
Here is the description of the show. “The series, scripted by Brent Friedman (Star Wars Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars) and produced by Daytime Emmy award-winning producer Sander Schwartz (The Batman, Baby Looney Tunes, Ozzy & Drix) will give fans a chance to actually hear the characters they’ve grown to love speak for the first time and delve into the lore of the Subway Surfers universe and follow the adventures of Jake, Tricky and Fresh. The animated series will premiere next Summer with 10 x 4 minute episodes, followed by a long form series of 22 minute episodes.“
Here is an exclusive image from Subway Surfers Animated
Christmas Eve was a wonderful day. We spent the day at home until the late afternoon. Then we went to the Christmas Eve Mass with my parents and sister. We actually got there early enough this year to have seats in the pews instead of the folding chairs in the back. It was a very nice Mass with great music. Eva sang her heart out during “Go Tell It On the Mountain.” She belted it out loud enough to have some folks turn right around to notice. After Mass we took the annual photo of the kids with the manger scene.
We then had a nice family dinner with my parents, sister and brother-in-law. Allison made her Christmas Chicken stew. We enjoyed good conversation and fun. Erik gave me a special tin of Garrett popcorn. He said it was supposed to be in a pink bucket but instead it was a Chicago Bulls one. While the pink one would have been funnier, it didn’t matter since the popcorn is what I’m excited about. It was nice of him to remember that I liked it so much.
After dinner we showed everyone our crazy huge MAX TRAXXX race track that we made. Everyone was impressed and gave it a try. I got some hair and cat fur stuck in one of the new cars and learned how to completely disassemble it and reassemble it. Then it was time to put the kids to bed for Christmas.
