BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #02783 Today was a day we have been excited for/dreading ever since High School graduation. The start of college for Eva. Move in day. Excited because Eva will do great things. They have been preparing for this forever and will meet every challenge. Dreading it because our kiddo is not going to be home with us each night for dinner. The sewing machine will be silent and we will not have 9pm shower time serenades. James will be depressed all the time and will come sleep in our bed. James takes up a lot of bed space. Andy did not come with us today, they would have been incredibly bored with all the things we had to do. So Andy hung out with friends for the day. They did get up and give Eva a massive hug. But overall we are so thrilled for Eva to start their journey. We (Allison, Eva and myself) got to MassArt about a half hour before our move in time so we parked in the parking lot and waited. When it was time to go we pulled up to the front of Eva's dorm and they had so...

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 #02779 As Eva prepares to leave for college on Saturday we are still picking up a few things here and there that they may need for the coming years. I was looking for some chopsticks that I could keep in my work bag and while the ones above were not the ones I found they were the ones that Allison and Eva found. I cancelled my order and got these instead. They have a fork, knife and spoon plus chopsticks. And they were less than my sets of chopsticks alone. I did pick up a cute set of 5 chopsticks that have cat shaped holders to give to Eva to bring to college. that way Eva and their roommates can each have a set to enjoy. I'm also going to give her $100 to specifically get sushi for the suite so they can break in the chopsticks.

Photo-A-Day #02778 Today we took a trip around Rhode Island to see the Trolls that were created by artist Thomas Dambo. There are 5 of them in Rhode Island and we've seen 2 of them before on a previous adventure, but today we decided that as one of the last big family adventures before College and High School we'd take this trip. You can get to each of the trolls pretty easily and see them all in one day. There are 4 stops because two trolls are at one of the stops.  We decided to drive out to the Troll that was furthest from us. That would be Young Boulder. The map we had said to put the actual GPS coordinates into your map program and that saved us from a very long walk to find this guy.  Andy decided that they would be getting as close as possible to each troll for a photo. Not climbing on it or anything, very respectful, just getting close to each one. At each stop Eva took out their sketchbook and did a quick sketch of each troll. Then took a reference photo to finish the...