Come What May

Hey folks.

So we find ourselves now at the end of another May, which, while perhaps not as busy as last year's installment, was certainly warmer.  With all the state standardized testing out of the way, our schools entered the final stretch of the year, our yard began to require more maintenance, and our weekend filled up.  Par for the course around these parts.

Check it out.

This retro, wood-styled mini-fridge (which I snatched during one of my many plundering raids on Granny's house back in 2015) sits in the garage unplugged until we load it up to use for camping.  After installing a bar and rearranging some stuff in the basement, and our vow to buy a high-end cooler this year, we decided to set it up behind the bar with kid drinks.  That'll keep the little bastards out of my beer fridge. . .

One weeknight early in the month, Kris took the girls out to the church for a youth night.  Not sure what exactly is happening here with Abby's popsicle sticks, as, once again, I was not involved in this evening's activities.

Alayna and Cristina.

Um. . . I think that's a PowerPuff Girl.  Right?

Abby decided to try out for Northeast's Drama Club performance this marking period, and landed a small part in a compilation-ish, 45-minute long play (I'm not big on theater, so I'm not really show what you call those things, but instead of one continuing story it was a collection of smaller bits all tied together with a narrator.)

Abby can be seen fourth from the bottom under 'Cast' (in a very appropriate role for her), while her sister and a bunch of her friends all helped out in the 'Crew.'

So the video Kris and I took for this first show she performed in (she participated in two or three over the course of a week) ended up on the long side, so Blogger wouldn't allow me to upload them.  I apologize for the short random clips, folks.

This was 1000% Kris' idea, she really wanted to do this.  Abby had no idea she had these shirts done up until after the show when we found her and asked for a picture.  You can tell how thrilled she was to have her mom pull this kinda shit on her.

One of Kris' coworkers does arts and crafts kind of stuff as a hobby and made Kris and the rest of the office these house signs that featured their pets.

As you can see, the sign's pretty accurate.

Ancestry.com once again updated my DNA results - something that happens once every 12-18 months or so.  Not a lot of huge or surprising changes here, they've just broken up the category that used to be called something like 'England and Wales' into two different ones (Northwestern Europe being the Saxon aspect of our family's history from which our surname originates.)  Slightly more Irish and Scottish than before, and less French and Scandinavian.  97% British.

One thing that's cool they just introduced is now they're able to asses the ethnic makeup of your parents' DNA, which is pretty cool.  One of my parents is mostly English, Irish, and Scottish, and the other is mostly English and Welsh.  But who knows which one is which.

More data breakdown.  I love me some data.

Another showing of Abby's play at Northeast.  We went to both of the evening showings of this play, accompanied with varying grandparents.

(Not sure she's acting here.)

Curtain call.

Abby and some of the cast, posing for parents.

The Seven Dwarfs.

Once again with these damn shirts.  Alayna wanted to take the family picture in front of one of the backdrops she and her friends spray-painted for the set.

Northeast released their student yearbooks half-way through the month, and Alayna ended up nabbing one of those 'Best. . .' awards.  I would have nominated her for Best Couch Potato, but whatever.

After six months of neglect, it was that time of year again to clean up the f***ing shed.  This winter we had ground squirrels (or red squirrels, whatever the hell they're called) try nesting in there, so I was forced to utilized a bunch of traps to kill the little bastards. This took about two hours to clear out, but it's good to have a clean shed again.

Photo op at Kris' church for Mother's Day.

After church, Kris drove up to Clare to visit with her mom for a bit while I tackled errands and chores at home.

Another youth event during the following week at Kris' church.

Not sure what's happening here with Ella's face. . .

Usually before the body is wrapped in linens, the major organs are removed and the body is stuffed with salt.  These stupid kids don't even know how the mummification process works. . .

Yeah, this isn't historically accurate in the slightest.

These were in a weird spot in my Google Photos library, as the dates are inaccurate because they were downloads via text from Kris, so they are throwbacks from last month (I think.)  Anyway, here's Abby holding her cousin, Nora. 

Kris and the rest of the moms from our friend group, hanging out at the Bos' house during a Meatfest while Yours Truly was off in Chicago seeing the Bouncing Souls with BP and Kimmel.

Both girls had an orchestra concert at Central Park Elementary's theater during a weeknight the third week of the month, and whenever this happens we end up having to hang out there for like two hours (despite the fact that Abby's 6th grade performance lasts like 8 minutes total and Alayna's lasts about 20 minutes, tops.)  You have to arrive like 45 minutes early for rehearsal or soundcheck or something stupid, there's about a half hour between performances, and then the waiting-around-for-your-kid-to-gather-all-their-shit at the end of the evening.  Great times.

Again, all the video bits that I captured this evening ended up being too large to upload here, so here's one short one of one of the girls' performances (if it's Abby's, she'll be over in the cello section to the right, if it's Alayna's, she's in the violins to the left.)

The Johnsons and us were able to convince the girls to pose for a group picture afterwards.  That's always a painless process.

Kris took these pics of our apple tree in the backyard blossoming.

In anticipation of our upcoming trip to Florida in June, Adam randomly sent me a couple pictures of one of the letters he received from me during my years in Africa.  I had completed forgotten about this.

Accurate and borderline racist all at once.

After months of dragging our feet, we finally arranged to have recessed lighting installed in the Study.  For years we had complained about the Study being too dark, and, while undergoing our pain-in-the-ass ceiling repair job back in February/March, we decided it'd be a good time to revamp the lighting in there. Kris' uncle Wayne was passing through on his way up from scenic Romulus and offered to stop in for a few hours and install them for us (he does this kind of a thing for a living so it was quick and easy for him to do, and he ultimately did a far better job than we could have done ourselves.)

After an hour or so of chatting with Wayne while he installed the new lights, Kris left to go pick her up in Clare so she could also visit with her brother.  While driving through Clare, Kris was rear-ended by some dumb-ass deaf guy, but fortunately not hurt.  She got the dude's insurance information but was able to have the dent popped out and the scratches touched up for free by her friend Kim's husband, Matt, in Harrison. Since Michigan is a no-fault state, our insurance would have gone up even if the other idiot was responsible for the accident.  I f***ing hate insurance companies.

The Science on my work team, Lisa, has been teaching in our district for 30 years, and this was her last one.  We threw her a retirement party up at G's Pizzaria in Saginaw, with a bunch of our school's staff coming out to send her off right.

That's our team's former math teacher, Paul, delivering Lisa (the short blonde standing next to him) a 'roast,' of sorts (our new math teacher, Steve, is the dude wearing the blue shirt at the bottom left.)

The new light setup in the Study - much, much better in there now, I love it.

Post-rain backyard.

Back to mowin' season.

Couple of mutts, mid-bone.

Kris' church's banner for the Memorial Day Parade.  Like me, she was responsible for organizing the church's involvement in this year's event.

While looking for an old Masonic banner, me and a couple brothers got to crawl up into the hundred-year-old, rarely-traversed attic about our Lodge in the Larkin Building downtown.  Came across tons of stuff from the 40s - 80s - old sword scabbards, hats, robes, etc. - but sadly no banner.

Samson never gets a break.

Towards the end of the month - on a random Thursday afternoon in the middle of the day (meaning I couldn't attend, sadly), Alayna had her 8th Grade Graduation Ceremony.  Kris was lucky enough to get a decent seat for the ceremony, though, and was able to provide the following pics and video.

On deck.

So long, Middle School. . .

The Class of 2026.

Remarks from the principal.

Alayna and some of her friends.

Showing off her locker at the end of the year.

Cristina and the Cannonball.

And of course you have to get one next to the sign out front.

The next evening, having some drinks with the Inner Circle.

Danielle passing out shots of some kind. . . .

Playing a trivia game called Mind the Gap (guys vs. girls.)  Mitch and Ryan both had to take off, so it was just Erik, Morgan and I vs. the five wives. . . and we absolutely destroyed them.

The following morning, around 8am, Erik assembled a bunch of guys from Lodge to help plant flowers down Eastman Rd for the annual Midland Blooms event.  Different businesses and organizations are assigned stretches of the road, ours being about a block in length starting at Eastman and St. Andrews (right across the street from the Library) and running north.

I designed these signs to display while we worked.  Any publicity is good publicity, folks.

Not difficult work, but definitely time-consuming.

About 80 minutes later, we were done.  Not bad at all.

Some press from the official Michigan Mason Facebook account.

The City of Midland also posted this to their official TikTok account.  I don't use that app so I'm not sure how that all works.

While on an 8th grade field trip to a local vocational college, my group of students was led into the medical wing of the building where we saw these creepy patient dummies.  They're motion-sensitive and speak and have vitals and shit, it's terrifying.

This is the thing of nightmares.

A coworker gifted me this for showing her how to teach history all year (she was new to the subject due to staff shake-ups at the beginning of the school year.)  I was okay with it.

Alayna and her friend, Ava, chalking up the sidewalk in front of our house.

Abby and Kris, out grabbing some food in downtown Midland.

Samson, once again assuming the 'oh shit, I just got caught chewing on something I wasn't supposed to be chewing on' position.  I frickin' hate this dog sometimes. . .

- Brian