The Houghs vs. I-75, Pt. II

Hi gang.


You know, I was going to write an entire entry about our epic return to Florida, down I-75... but I'm feeling really, really lazy today.


Instead, I'll briefly sum up the highlights for you. Let's save some time, folks:


1. We set out from Clare in the morning with way more shit than we had traveled north with.


2. Ohio did not want us to leave, and threw numerous traffic jams to keep us in its crappiness.



3. The Houghs manage to reach a Super 8 Motel in Tennessee in the evening and endure a horrible night with the kids (we failed to pick up milk for Alayna, and therefore had to suffer through a handful of 2 - 4am toddler tantrums...)



4. At a Chic' Fil-A (however the hell you spell that) in northern Georgia, Abby projectile-vomited all over herself, the car seat, several restaurant chairs, the floor and yours truly. On the plus side, the food was pretty good.


5. Finding Nemo was viewed back-to-back a half-dozen times, at the very least.


6. We ran out of stand-up comics to listen to on the way back, and were forced to listen to Dane Cook for a few hours. He's just as terrible as everybody says he is.


7. We arrived back home at 10:30pm. Our house was still standing, nothing was damaged or stolen, and moles had completely turned our front lawn into Verdun.


Anyway, after a night or two of relaxing, we had ourselves a very, very lame New Year's Eve countdown (Kris and I stayed up watching a movie, then switched over to ABC for the Dick Clark Mega-Stroke Rockin' New Year's Eve for the last ten minutes of 2010).

By the way, I don't know who said substituting weird eye make-up and an obnoxious wardrobe for genuine, musical talent was perfectly acceptable, but that Ke$ha chick needs to be pushed out to see and left to die. My God, she's horrendous...


In better news, we managed to obtain a brief - but radical - three-hour engagement with Lt. and Mrs. Foltz recently.

Yes, they're still alive. In Rwanda.

They were in town for the big MSU game (which didn't turn out so hot for them, unfortunately), having taken some time off from their current adventures in Africa. The Houghs don't generally get to associate with fellow Peace Corps Volunteers (traveling with kids = : ( ) so the opportunity to do so is always welcome. This time around, we got to hang out with kids instead of Gulders, so it wasn't quite as cool, but we had a good time nonetheless.

To sum up our visit: they lead waaay more interesting lives than we do.


Speaking of boring lives, I went back to work on Monday. Hooray for me. My students were just as anxious to get back to their studies as you can imagine. If there's anything that kids love more than school, I sure as hell don't know what it is.

Having taken two and a half weeks off from class, they probably weren't in the best of shape to tackle a long-winded PowerPoint lecture on the American Revolutionary War in Mr. Hough's class.

Oh well... at least there wasn't any bloodshed to be had. So we had that going for us.

Huzzah.


Speaking of going back to school, Alayna started at her new school this week, too - Star Child Academy. It's a direct competitor of her old digs, Primrose Schools, but it seems to be more focused on curriculum and education than songs and playtime. This is reflected in Alayna's ability to greet her parents in Hindi (Hindi?!) and Spanish (okay, that's understandable), and the fact that she can identify numbers and letters more readily now. I'm a big fan of that. I also like the fact that they have cameras installed that stream footage of your child's classroom so you can watch what they're up to via cyberspace whenever you want.

If only they had that in my classroom...

So, things are slowly turning back to normal around here. The girls are adjusting to their old schedules, and me and the ol' ball n' chain are readjusting to waking up early and having to wrangle our kids without grandparent assistance.

The weather down here, however, took little time to adjust to. Not a lot of snow to be had around these parts.


Ohio Sucks,

- Brian