The Houghs: May: Month Three of Quarantine

Kris FINALLY finished her end tables this month. . .

So, May was fun. Kinda like April, just warmer.

The Houghs' schedule has remained more or less the same this month; we could've just as easily called this month April, Pt. II. During the weekdays, the girls and I do our virtual schoolwork/teaching (via Google Classroom and Zoom), and Kris eventually went back to work (they opened up dental offices later this month - hooray.) We spent a lot of time outdoors this month, since the weather was heating up and we had nothing but time on our hands, and as such our yard and garden beds look immaculate.

With Covid-19 numbers dropping like crazy around these parts (and the state altogether), it's only a matter of time before the Stay at Home Order is lifted and some small degree of normalcy can resume. In the meantime, we Houghs have continued to chug along as usual - you can see yourself from this month's installment how that looks.

Enjoy.

The first weekend of the month, we had ourselves a small get-together with four of the families in our extended friend group over at the Larson residence (their kid, Sophie, is the one shown here smashing her face against their backyard trampoline.)

We all threw in on some pizzas and had a bonfire - par for the course with this group.

We've hung our regularly with these families since the pandemic first broad-sided us back in mid-March, so we're already well past the point of exposure.

Morgan makes one hell of a fire.

Morgan's fires (well, more like funeral pyres, really) are so hot they can melt glass beer bottles. Don't believe me? Check this out (you can see the bottle in the coals in this pic.)

Yes, that was a beer bottle.

As previously stated, Kris and I did a shit-load of yard work this month (well, we have throughout the course of the last couple months, but we really kicked it into gear in May.) Here, I took a tiller and hand-tilled the far-back garden bed in our backyard. I also raked up all the moss and put down shade grass seed, along with moss-killer and fertilizer, before drenching it all with our sprinklers and putting hay over top of it all. Hopefully, in a few weeks, we'll have some lush grass growing back there.

This tree has a pretty cool bloom going each Spring. No frickin' clue as to what kinda tree it is, though. I'm not a treeologist.

We turned on our sprinkler system this year by ourselves for the first time ever (saving us about $75), and out of nearly fifty sprinkler heads and twelve zones (yes, that many - our yard is huge), we only had one head bust off, as you can see here in this video.

The Grand Lodge of Michigan sent this picture out on Facebook on Star Wars Day (May the Fourth.) I was impressed.

Alayna, recording herself doing some violin work for her Orchestra Class. . .

Taking the kids - and dogs - out for our daily walk.

The last Star Wars episode, Ep. IX - Rise of Skywalker, came out on Disney+ on May the Fourth, and I forced the rest of my roommates to watch it as our evening movie (I was the only one who had seen it, having gone with Erik to watch it back in December, before society collapsed.)

Kris and the Snuggle Bros.

Alayna's BFF, Maddy, recently acquired a new bird for a pet. Now Alayna's obsessed with getting one herself (not f***ing happening.)

Guess how much fun it is putting a harness on Samson in order to take him out for a walk. . .

Stopped off at the Collier residence to say hi during one of our daily walks with the Johnson family, but they weren't there. So Abby and Ella made good use of their driveway chalk art instead.

Bought this deck of playing cards off Amazon. I have zero regrets.

Our neighbors, the Angellotti's, saw their daughter (also named Abby) graduate from Northwood University this month, Summa Cum Laude, and asked us to help them decorate a banner that they could throw up on the house for when she arrived home. The girls helped us out with the coloring.

A week or so into the month, I finally decided to say adieu to my Pandemic Beard, which I had been growing since all hell broke loose. I really liked the beard portion of it, but the mustache was driving me crazy. Kris was pretty excited I decided to shave it off - she was not a fan of the beard.

Backyard trampoline antics. With a couple unimpressed dogs.

Lonnie, Erik and I, headed over to Ryan's house one evening for backyard, husband-only bonfire-and-beers. We walk everywhere nowadays (usually while smoking pipes and cigars and drinking beers on the open road - cops apparently aren't a thing anymore.)

The following night, all the wives assembled over back at the Larson residence for a fire. We have to take turns with stuff like this, since no one can get babysitters these days on account of the pandemic.

On Mother's Day morning, the girls and I made up pancakes for Kris (the girls planned it all out, I just facilitated.)

(I probably won't get something like this for Father's Day. . .)

An ice cream truck makes a scheduled stop in front of Chestnut Hill Elementary. Abby and Ella were quick to order as much as they could carry.

Abby, of course with no helmet.

Some selfie I found off of Alayna's phone.

Alayna took this pic of Samson, showing no shame while trying to sneak up on Alayna's apple core.

Alayna wanted to make red velvet cupcakes one afternoon. I told her to knock herself out, as it gets her away from Youtube and her phone. Anything to keep these kids distracted these days. . .

I guess it worked (I don't know, I didn't try any.)

Kris and her damn selfies. . .

I finally started burning discarded yard brush towards the middle of the month. I had cut down a few small trees, and had been amassing fallen branches for months. I started a fire around noon, and it raged throughout the day.

Of course at first it was just a smoky-ass mess, but eventually the coals were hot enough that larger wood was catching fire and soon enough we had ourselves a legit bonfire.

The fire was going so good that later on, following dinner, we invited the Larsons, Johnsons, and Colliers over to have some drinks and let the kids jump around on the trampoline (a favorite past time.)

Yes, all the same kids you saw in a different trampoline earlier on in this blog post.

The Dads. Erik, Morgan, Ryan and Yours Truly.

I just let Morgan run fires around here anymore, he's like a Jedi with that shit.

Ella and the Larson kids spent the night at our house that night, and the next day Kris and I helped them with their virtual schoolwork.

Some backyard badmitten (I think that's what it's called, right?) This was another one of Kris' 2-second videos she's been amassing throughout the duration of this pandemic.

Our next target: the side beds along our shared fence with the Angellotti's. Kris wants me to rip up all the bushes and kill all the ground cover that you see here. Once that's done, we'll smother it all with black plastic for a few seasons, then ultimately plant grass seed and let the yard grow back into it.

Eventually we're going to do the same thing with our large, front yard garden bed. It's beyond her control at this point.

Another late-night Zoom session with BP and Kimmel.

Playing a The Simpsons version of Clue (and yes, I kicked everyone's ass at this, gimme a break.)

The afternoon of the Great Flood of 2020. After a few days of heavy rain, we spotted this pump working the line outside our house (there's an access point directly in front of the Angellotti house.) The City of Midland wasn't taking any chances this time around, not after 2017's epic flooding. I took this pic just as we were just heading out for our daily walk with the Johnsons during this point, and we had no idea that in about twenty minutes the Wixom Lake Dam was going to burst.

Remember earlier in this post where I talked about how we had put down grass seed, fertilizer, and straw in order to re-grow portions of our backyard? Well, we did that for the front yard, too (timed perfectly, before we had three days of torrential downpour.)

Later on that evening, as we continually received emergency alerts on our phones about dams breaking and cities being evacuated, Erik and I helped Ryan make sure his drainage system was working properly.

When we got home, some hours later, this thing was still running like crazy. I took this pic right before we went inside to start hauling stuff up from the basement, just in case we got flooded (which, as you all know, we didn't.)

Another day, another selfie.

Frolicking in the backyard. . .

One day, while Ella was over, the girls decided to give each other 'spa treatments.' Whatever the hell that means. . .

On another day, Alayna decided that she was too old for toys, and began organizing all of her Shopkins in order to sell them on Ebay (hence the open Chromebook.)

Samson helped himself to the comforter.

Kris snapped this while I was grilling on the back patio one evening, probably to make fun of my hair, which has gotten a bit unruly over the course of the last few months.

Hacking away at bushes and ground cover along that Goddamn bed on the side of the yard. . .

A week or so after the flood, our family began volunteering along with members of Kris' church to clear out damaged homes in the southwestern part of Midland (kinda over by Northwood University.) After clearing out one house, Alayna snapped this pic of a collapsed garage that had swallowed up two vehicles (you could see the basement from the street, as the entirety of the front yard had collapsed in on itself and destroyed the basement walls. This house, obviously, was condemned, and left to crumble.

In the next house, Alayna and Abby went to work ripping the first three feet of drywall out of the kitchen (the flood waters had completely filled up the basement and had risen up to three feet on the first floor.) It was insane.

I went through and cut a line across the drywall with a knife first, so that the girls didn't shred the entirety of the drywall when they began kicking and hammering the bejesus out of it.

They may have a career in this sorta thing down the road.

Wearing a mask while doing this was super uncomfortable, but helped my allergies a ton (being allergic to mold, ripping up sopping-wet insulation and drywall is far from being my cup of tea.)

I let Abby do this.

Everywhere you looked you saw piles like this. Soaking wet furniture, trash, drywall, paneling, flooring, insulation, and all sorts of ruined possessions. I don't see how anyone could come back from this, and the scale of the damage in Midland County (Sanford got it way worse than us) is hard to wrap your head around.

The volunteers that came out from Kris' church on this particular day (I offered to take the pic, that's why I'm not in it.)

Afterwards, Kris took the kids to get some ice cream from Great Lakes Ice Creamery as a reward for their acts of service (not that you're supposed to reward something like that, but both girls put in hours of back-breaking work without much complaining whatsoever.)

Remember when I fell on Abby's new skateboard? And I jacked up my ankle? Well, instead of healing quickly, the shit got infected, so I had to get a prescription. Punk rock.

Picked up a sixer of this towards the end of the month. They're nice to have on hand during the warmer evenings out with friends.

Some of the dads in our group, checking out a clogged drain following the previous week's flooding while out for a walk.

Our friend, Lonnie, recently bought a new house, and while scoping it out, we found an egress window with a ton of these frogs hanging out. Maybe they got washed in with all the rains. . .?