BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #02785 High School has arrived for Andy. Despite lounging around for most of the Summer and having pretty late nights and sleeping later, Andy was up and ready to go at 5am this morning to shower, get packed and head to their girlfriend's house to walk to school together.  When I talked with Andy after school they were very excited about the day. Andy is already making connections with their teachers. Andy is looking forward to their first rotation in CTE which is Carpentry. Their teacher doesn't call Andy by their name but rather, "My Man!" because Andy is so enthused with the program and answers most questions. I'm excited to see where Andy goes with these programs.

 Photo-A-Day #02784 Lego has made some simple little happy planters as part of their botanical line. Andy has been building a lot of the botanical line of LEGO. They no longer wanted their Minecraft and other LEGO sets but really enjoy building the botanical line. I like these little guys, they are happy and cute.

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...