All Hallow's Eve

Happy Halloween, America!

Honestly, this has been pretty anti-climatic for the Houghs, seeing how the pinnacle of our Halloween season is our annual Halloween Party and all.  The girls have classroom Halloween parties and a costume parade at school, we take them Trick or Treating, and thaaaat's about it.  Nothing super crazy, it almost feels like an Epilogue at this point in the grand scheme of things.

Still, we have to jump through the hoops with it all, because our kids - unlike Kris and I - look forward to Halloween itself moreso than our party.  I assume it's the candy.

So yeah.  Here's how All Hallow's Eve went down in 2018.  Behold. . .

Kris took the day off so she could swing into the school and help out in the girls' classrooms, take pictures, and watch the costume parade.

Alayna's 5th grade classroom (she's towards the left.)

Alayna and some of her squad (Maddie, Christina, Noah, and Jazmine.)

Abby, Larkin, aaaaand I don't know the other kid.

Back in 3rd Grade. . .

Abby shows off her 'Haunted House' shoe box.

Some of Alayna's 5th Grade Class.

Post-Halloween party.

Not sure what's happening here.

These must be out of order or something - this looks like when Abby's classroom was actually making their Haunted Houses.  Kris' phone must be messed up.

I had a half-day at work, so I was able to walk down and pick the girls up from school (this pathway that leads to the school playground is like a block from our house, which is super convenient.)

A few hours later, a couple pharaohs all ready to start Trick or Treating.

 

Ready for plunder.

Our friends, the Johnsons, host a 'base camp,' so to speak, during Midland's Trick or Treating hours.  They have a fire pit in their driveway, they cook up a bunch of hot dogs and appetizers, and otherwise just hangout while trick-or-treaters frequent their house for candy.  We parked our van over by their house and dropped off our cooler (filled with my designated Halloween-ish craft beers) before setting off around the block with the kids.

Eric stayed back, but Courtney and their daughter accompanied us and a group of others through the neighborhood.

The crew.

The Cannonball, hammin' it up as usual.

 

Houghs, Johnsons, and Davises.

After an hour or so of Trick or Treating, I headed back to the Johnson's to drink a few beers around the fire with a few of the other dads.  Eventually, the women and children returned from their Trick or Treating venture - bags filled with hard-earned candy - and we grazed on the spread that was set up in the Johnson's garage.  Around 9pm, we headed home, where I cracked open the final Halloween beer of the year - an offering from Michigan's own Vivant.

While the girls watched a Halloween movie (Casper, this time around), they ate, sorted, and organized their scores.

Watson had to be restrained.  He was pretty excited about the kids' newly-acquired loot.

  

. . . and that was Halloween 2018.  See ya next year, America.

- Brian

The Rest of October

May this haunt your dreams.

Happy Fall, America.

This was a pretty insane month, folks.  Halloween took up a sound portion of our spare time:  buying things and decorating for (and ultimately hosting) our Halloween Party, then Trick or Treating a couple days later.  There were also several school activities we had to juggle around - fundraisers, parties, parent/teacher conferences, etc.  Factor in Girl Scouts, piano, gymnastics (yes, we're doing that again), and social gathering on top of the existing school and work, it goes without saying that the month of October is right up there with December and June as a pure wash.

. . . and did I mention the f***ing leaves?  'Cause we had our fair share of those, too.

Anyway, here's some of the stuff we undertook on the side throughout the month.  Enjoy.

Kris bought a bunch of crap for our house 'fall' display.  You can imagine how excited I was to come home and find that scarecrow standing in front of my frickin' house. . .

Clearing out some leftover summer offerings from Short's Brewery while playing poker over a friend's house.  The beer was good, my poker skills were not.

Some pictures via Class Dojo that were shared by Alayna and Abby's respective teachers.  It's a nice app that let's you catch a glimpse of life inside your kids' classroom (and also allows you to see how they're behaving.)

Writing stories - one of Abby's favorite school activities.

Some sort of presentation thing going on in Alayna's classroom.

(Alayna is in the long-sleeve teal shirt.)

One school night, while Kris was away at a PTO meeting, I let the girls finish up some ice cream after dinner and let them watch the Twilight Zone.  Because that's how awesome Dads roll.

We have a ridiculous amount of maples in our front yard.  They all turn a bright yellow, which is pretty awesome (until you have to rake them all up, of course.)

(From our side yard.)

Another rainy day on Alayna's Safety Patrol beat. . .

Kris was one of the first ten Midlanders to utilize Kroger's new ClickIt feature, and so she won a free Selfie Stick (which the girls demanded to play with.)  Essentially, you go online or use the Kroger app and enter in all the grocery shit you want to buy (minus booze, sadly.)  Then, you select a pick-up time at least an hour or so into the future.  During your allotted time, you swing by Kroger, park in a designated spot, and the employees bring out your frickin' groceries, free of charge.  This service costs nothing.  Kris is sold.

More selfie stick.  Couple pics aren't the most flattering after a full day of work.

We had some friends over for a few drinks on a whim one Friday, a couple weeks before our big Halloween bash (hence the decorations scattered about in the background.)

My beverage and glass selections are on point, Internet.  Try and convince me otherwise.

Watson stands guard over the garage while I take a break from raking the leaves.

One Saturday, half-way through the month, while Yours Truly was hilt-deep in yard work and paper-grading, Kris and the girls met up with her friend, Kim, at that one pumpkin patch in Beaverton that we've frequented a few times before (2015, 2017, etc.)

Folks, meet the smelliest animal in existence.  I've snuggled with them before on many a night, I know what I'm talking about.

I hate goats.  I won't get in to it here, but just rest assured that they're probably the shittiest animals on the planet aside from mosquitoes and cats.

Is Alayna doing a Trump impression?

Heading back to the van after a long day of pumpkin farm shenanigans.  I haven't heard otherwise, so I'm assuming that's Kim's kid Abby's carrying, and not some random kid she found in the petting zoo or something.

A rare moment of tranquil, sisterly imaginative play.  We try and document these rare occurrences whenever they happen, lest people not believe that, on occasion, our kids will actually act civil with one another.

Kris asked if she could take back some of the cans to Meijer so that the girls could use the collected money for their school's big fundraiser.  I thought she was talking about a small bag in the garage, not my big bag of beer cans I was saving to put towards future booze purchases.  I wasn't very happy about this.

I put a lot of effort into drinking all that money, Chestnut Hill.  You better appreciate the hell out of it.

The big school fundraiser this fall was the Walk-a-Thon.  I forget what that all entails, all I know is that every frickin' kid in Midland was trying to raise money throughout the entirety of October.  It got real old real fast.

Abby tears ass around an orange cone.  No idea why.

More mom-and-kids selfies. . .

I assume this is the Walk-a-Thon itself, as Alayna and her friends are clearly walking here.

Noah and the Cannonball.

The kids who raised the most in their classrooms got to hit the principal in the face with a pie.  Alayna, at left, raised more than the rest of the kids in Ash's class, so the honor was hers.

A little lackluster, to be honest.

Brady winds up. . .

While Abby didn't get to hit the principal in the face with a pie, she did win a prize for the ridiculous amount of money she raised for the Walk-a-thon:  a f***ing DRONE.

This was our test flight in the backyard, the following morning.  It's super tricky to fly, so we're going to have to try and practice a little more before we do anything super tricky with it.  There's an app I downloaded on my phone that connects to the drone's camera, so I can control the camera optics right on the drone controller.  A pretty cool feature.

Coming in right on the heels of the CHE Walk-a-Thon fundraiser, comes yet another Girl Scout Cookie campaign.  I hate these more than anything else in existence.

Shameless.  That's what this is.  Unfortunately, every other person on Facebook has their kids doing the exact same thing.

Time for another rip-roarin' October Girl Scout Glow Dance.  This time around, I made it a point not to show up.

I'm not entirely sure which of these three ladies looks the craziest, here. . .

Abby and her friend, Allie.

Trying on some winter coats.  We decided to just say 'screw it' and drop a few hundred dollars on new winter coats for the whole family. . . then we added on new boots, gloves, and hats.  'Tis the season.

Hanging out in a Gamestop in Saginaw and killing some time on the Nintendo Switch while Kris continued to shop for outfits in a neighboring clothing store.

STEM Night at Chestnut Hill.  Now featuring robots.

Alayna and a high-fiving robot.

Kris tries out the photo backdrop she set up in the basement for our Halloween Party.

The Kid Zone.  Having a fully-finished basement to where you can banish all children makes ALL the difference when it comes to hosting parties, folks.

I told Kris I didn't expect these balloons to last more than twenty minutes after kids started to arrive to the party.  In reality, they probably lasted a full hour before they were all ripped down in a sugar-induced fury.

The Living Room, all set for our Halloween Party (this was actually taken the night before, but that's how it looked during the festivities. . . just with a fog machine as well.)

Alayna created a Christmas List towards the end of the month.  She's going to be a really, really sad girl on Christmas Morning. . .

Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic candidate for Michigan's Governorship, visited my school to speak with our dozen or so students who are members of our school's Michigan Youth in Government chapter.  I'm co-advisor of this club, so I was able to sit in to this Q & A and take pictures and video of Whitmer's exchange with the students.  The students wrote their own questions and got to read them to her, and Whitmer, in return, answered the kids' queries in a very polished and predictable manner.  It was a pretty cool 45 minutes, but I didn't upload any of the pictures from that meeting due to students being in them (FERPA.)  I did, however, snap a quick, crappy picture of their tour bus in my school's parking lot. . . so you got that, instead.  Enjoy the hell out of it.

Alayna smuggled her camera to school one day, and snapped off a series of pictures throughout her day.  Here she is during  a Girl Scout meeting.  No frickin' clue as to what she's supposed to be (a Mexican pirate, perhaps?)

Again.  No idea.

. . . aaaaaand here's a random picture she took of her little cousin, Scarlett, during Before School Care at the girls' school.  Why not.

- Brian