Across Another April

What's up, fans.

After a long, dreary winter, this month saw somewhat warmer weather slowly creep back, and with that came a slew of long-needed house/yard work and, as always, more social gatherings that led to outdoor hangouts.  Overall, aside from a few previously-discussed highlights already mentioned, our weeks entailed of the usual school/work grind (we're in Testing Season right now, with the PSAT and MSTEP taking up much of me and the girls' educational focus) and weekends centering on hanging out with our social group and working on domestic projects.

Anyway, here's a brief glimpse of what all went down for the Houghs in the month of April.

Behold. . .

As always, the beginning of the month saw Yours Truly attending Lodge on the first Thursday.  Like I've said before, we're housed in the historic Larkin Building, right downtown, where we've been since the 1920s.  We have a discreet entrance into the side of the building, where the oldest elevator in the county (seen here) takes you up to the third floor.

This elevator takes about a minute to make it up three, measly floors.  It's an interesting ride.  Pretty sure I'm gonna die in this contraption one of these days.

These two assholes, doing what they do best.

Abby's been big into painting lately, so we've been buying her canvases on a pretty regular basis.  Kris took this one, as you can tell from the class of sangria off to the side.

Our first big project of the Spring was fencing in our yard.  Watson has always been good about staying in the yard - I only had to walk him around the perimeter of the yard once in order for him to understand his boundaries (as much of a loud-mouthed asshole that dog can be, he's ridiculously smart and well-behaved.)  Samson, is. . . well. . . an idiot, so we've had him on a run in the backyard since we got him last January.  With all his pent-up energy becoming an issue, we figured we'd spend some of Papa Joe's stimulus money on fencing in our yard.  After comparing prices from various fencing companies, we decided we'd do the thing ourselves, and early in the month, on a Saturday, my stepdad John and a couple buddies spent a day driving in the fence posts.

This process was pretty labor-intensive and took a quite a lot of time, but I had Erik (at center) and Mitch (at right) lending me a hand.

After driving in the corner posts (John brought a fence driver and Erik a gas-powered auger, so the work was much, much easier), we poured in concrete and set them in place.  Then, we strung along a line to keep track of where the fence posts had to be placed (in order for the chain link to be drawn correctly.)

Had to keep the lads hydrated during our morning/afternoon work.

With Bloody Marys and good music playing, this wasn't too bad at all.

Erik operated the auger and Mitch and I drove in the posts, with John basically filling in the role as foreman and telling us what to do.

Miraculously, we didn't hit any sprinkler, cable, or electrical lines (we had the City and Consumer's Energy come out and flag them for us.)

The southern and the eastern sides of our yard are already fenced, so we only had to fence the western side (shown previously) along with the northern side, which comprised of the narrower side yards, both of which required gates.  We did hit a sprinkler head on this northeastern side, but it was fixable.

While we were slaving away working on the fence, Kris took the girls out for some Girl Scout something-or-other.  Not sure what it was or where they went, so my descriptions of these pictures aren't going to be stellar by any means.  Here's Abby with, um, a tree. . . ?

And here's Abby holding. . . something?

The western border, posted.

Kris went out and bought us all subs for lunch, and afterwards John took off.  Mitch and Erik and I decided to continue drinking Bloody Marys and smoke cigars on my back porch throughout the afternoon.  Zero complaints here.

The girls - and Ella, Erik's daughter - out in the woods with the Scouts.

It almost looks like they're cleaning stuff.  Maybe that was the point?

Abby and Ella won $20 gift cards for their efforts - Abby at GameSpot, Ella at Starbucks.

After a few hours of hanging out on m back patio, we decided we should have a grill-out and make an evening of it.  The guys took off to get supplies while I prepared our house for the next day's Easter traditions (prepping the baskets, writing out and setting the clues for our annual Easter Scavenger Hunt, etc.)  About an hour later, we reconvened and moved the grill out of the garage for its first round of service of the season.

Burgers, chicken, and some kind of other animal Erik killed while hunting in the fall.

Awesome, awesome food.

Kris, Courtney and Erik enjoying our first fire of the season.

Everyone else in our 'inner circle' of our friends group - the Larsons, Colliers, and the rest of Mitch's family - were otherwise occupied, but we had a good evening regardless.

One day when the girls and I had the day off of work, we decided to go to war with the house and spring clean it.  Surprisingly enough, the girls had a somewhat decent work ethic and we were able to knock it out with little bloodshed. . .

Enjoying the first Slurpees with the coming of warmer weather.

While walking around downtown one day, Ella and Abby checked out the war memorial down by the Midland Courthouse.

Kris decided, one weekend, that we'd host a Mexican night at our house.  Since there are so many excellent grill aficionados in our group, this means one can expect amazing food at every get-together.  Here are some of Mitch's bacon-wrapped stuffed jalapenos.  One of my favorites.

Pork carnitas.

Chowing down in the kitchen.

Es bueno.

Morgan, Mitch and Ryan

The warmer weather allowed us to hang out in our backyard, and a couple families brought over their cornhole boards (we seriously need to invest in a set ourselves one of these days.)  Kelli (Mitch's wife, shown here hugging Kris) was even able to make it out for an hour (she's an accountant and during Tax Season she works, like, every day for 12-plus hours a day, or something insane like that.)

Lotta kids at these things. . .

Mitch and Ryan, listening to vinyl in the Study.

A solid go-to stout, I try and keep this stocked as much as possible.

My 12-year-old's posted words of warning on her bedroom door.

Kris oversees some of Alayna's learning.  While she's usually a straight-A student, Alayna has struggled a bit with virtual learning this year, and her grades dipped a bit, which has forced us to micro-manage her education more than we'd like.  She lost her phone until her grade in Science goes up, which obviously didn't go over well, but we're an A-and-B family.  No child of a teacher should be pulling C's.

My beer fridge in the basement finally died this month, which was frickin' awesome.  We were able to find a replacement fridge quickly enough, but I had to disassemble this monster of a unit before it would fit through the storage room door (and that's after I had to take the damn door of its hinges, too.)

Fortunately Home Depot brought the new fridge downstairs and set it up for us, and even took the old one out and up the stairs for us so we didn't have to worry about it.  I was pretty appreciative of this.

Yet another large home expense we incurred during this month was having our vents blown out, a process that took a couple hours, but was well worth it.

This all went down one day while the girls and I were at school.

Kris said this sound went on for hours.  Glad I wasn't home for it.

Abby, like her folks, is big into jean jackets these days.

A few weeks after driving in the fence posts, John and my cousin Mindy's son, Darron, came out to put up the chain link.  This process was nowhere near as difficult, but more tedious - it took hours.

Kris and Mom sorta 'helped,' but not really.

Watson somehow got stabbed in the face while trying to play with a dog, on the opposite side of a fence, while out for a walk with the girls.  Thank God this scabbed over pretty quickly and we didn't end up having to take him to the vet and drop a few hundred bucks on a stupid visit.

First fire at the Collier residence, towards the end of the month.  Their setup is pretty awesome, we hang out there pretty often during the summer.

One of the toilets in the boys' bathroom in our 8th grade building backed up and flooded toilet water all over the bathroom and, consequently, into the carpeted hallway.  That was pretty awesome.

More snuggle time for these two.  After the kids go to bed, and Kris and I watch some Netflix or Hulu or whatever, this is what they do until we put them to bed.

Kris snapped this pic of Abby, standing at her post, one Friday morning after being dropped off for duty.  She was not a fan of getting her picture taken.

Abby's a big fan of Italian food (as you can surmise from her selections here), and decided to touch up our fridge-side meal plan board.  Needless to say, we didn't go with her suggestions - that's too much carbs for any person to consume.

- Brian