Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and All Things Yule

Welcome back, America.

The Laginess Clan

Our Thanksgiving/Black Friday this year  was a return to form for the Houghs, following our Covid-related 'quarantine' last year, which forced us to abstain from taking our usual trip south in favor of holding a more modest Friendsgiving over at the Larson's residence with our local friend group.  This year we once again drove down to scenic Romulus in order to have Thanksgiving with Kris' Laginess branch of her extended family, and her uncle Wayne, as always, hosted the event.

I didn't take any pictures this year aside from a requested group picture on the front steps - I even forgot to take my usual picture of downtown Romulus on our drive in, totally dropped the ball this year.  Kris and her family don't take a lot of pictures, so I kinda take a back seat as an in-law and neglect my usual photo-taking role.   As such there's not a lot of pics from Thanksgiving itself, but the following evening - Black Friday - I took some of me and Kris' usual tree-decorating process.

All and all a pretty boring post we have for you today, but by this point you guys all know how this weekend works for us Houghs.  We're pretty big on traditions around these parts, so you could probably go back to previous years' posts for a more detailed synopsis.

So yeah.  Enjoy. . .

Still unable to find where our DVD copy of me and Kris' go-to Tree-decorating movie, Some Like It Hot, we decided to say 'screw it' this year and purchased the movie on Amazon Prime.  Kinda pissed we had to do that, but at least we have it in HD now, and there's no chance of us losing our copy of the movie again.

Kris and I opted to try out this pre-made jug of egg nog that I recently bought from Costco, foregoing our usual Christmas cocktails for the time being.  This is definitely the way to go, it's a really solid holiday drink - we'll be buying more of this stuff the next time we head over to Costco.

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon light a fire on the train. . .

Like we've done the last couple of years, I tried to section the tree off in 'themes' for our ornaments:  our various ornament collections would be clustered along the sides, our religious and cultural ones towards the top, and our family ones front and center (with the less-cool but still living room Tree -worthy ornaments along the bottom and in the rear.)  Kris always handles the family ones (the girls' first ornaments, our wedding ornament, our first year as a couple ornament, the dog's ornaments, etc.)

Josephine breaks up a party on the train (cock-blocking Daphne in the process.)

Our Muppet collection is slowly-but-surely taking over the tree.

These creepy old guys wouldn't survive in the #MeToo-era United States, that's for damn sure.

I wish they'd release more Indiana Jones ornaments, but I think that ship has probably sailed - society no longer appreciates this guy.

More cock-blocking, this time on a Florida beach.

Front section of the tree, highlighting various family ornaments.

"What does it say in your CRYSTAL BALL???"

Despite Kris getting a brand-new, fancy phone a week ago, she still hasn't figured out how to take decent pictures.  Frickin' wives. . .

Our only tree-related drama this year was our star, which we've owned since, like, 2013, finally died on us.  Fortunately, I was able to buy an identical replacement at Target. . . for an absurd $35.

Spatz and his Harvard men arrive in Florida.  Trouble brewing. . .

My new SNES ornament - which, like the NES console shown here, lights up and plays authentic Super Mario Bros. game music - nestled into the video game section of our tree.  Super happy I managed to buy this the day it was released (before the price sky-rocketed on Amazon), and I sincerely hope they release the N64 next year, that'd be awesome.

The jig is up - hiding from machine gun fire under a banquet table.

And there you have it, folks - the Houghs' 2021 Christmas Tree.  Bask in all of its glory, America.

- Brian