All Hallows Eve

Happy Halloween, America!!!

Abby and her cop costume (that she later abandoned.)

The last couple of years, Halloween seems to be over the second our party wraps up.  Never mind the fact that Halloween itself hasn't happened yet - for us, the season ends when the last guest leaves our house.

So, consequently, Halloween itself has been a little 'meh' for us lately.  Kris takes the day off, in order to take pics of the kids' (well, Abby's, at least - the Cannonball's in middle school now) costume parade and parties at school.  I generally get a half-day at work, skip the optional professional development session in the afternoon, and come home to help get kids fed and in costumes before the Trick or Treating begins.

Chestnut Hill costume parade. . . you can spot Abby's total '80s-ishness.

This year, I had to cram a few other things into my already hectic schedule before all the festivities started.  I had a 2 o'clock teeth cleaning appointment at the dentist, and before that I had to buy a new vehicle (I'll touch on that in a later post, though.)  Once I tackled those two things, though, I was able to pick up the girls and head home to get things rolling.

So yeah - here's how our particularly cold and rainy Halloween went down.

Behold. . . .

Ella's smooth criminal

The earlier picture of Abby dressed up as a cop was from very early this morning.  She ultimately changed her mind at the last minute and switched to her '80s costume for the school parade and parties (which Kris was super excited about, since that meant coloring and doing up Abby's hair when she was already running short on time.)  Parenting can be a real bitch sometimes. . .

Kris was able to snap a quick, couple of blurry pics of our niece, Scarlett, as she walked past in her class' costume parade.

She dressed up as her dad for Halloween, which I think is cute.

Sophie, as a Hogwarts student.

Later on in the morning, in Abby's classroom for the Halloween Party.

Party games don't change much over the years - pretty sure I did this in elementary school myself.

What the hell, are those real gourdes?

Cyndi Lauper, gettin' down with some snacks.

Around 6pm-ish, we drove over to the Johnson residence for their annual Trick or Treating Party.  The moms and kids all trick-or-treat around 'the Horseshoe' (the neighborhood around Sweetbrier, that resembles a giant horseshoe) while the dads 'man the fort' (tending a fire, drinking beer, and passing out Halloween candy.)  It's a pretty cool setup.

It was about 36 degrees and raining - f***ing misersable .  Not really ideal for trick-or-treating, but not a single kid there was willing to pass up an opportunity to score a bag of free candy.

(That's Jackson in the giant Pokemon costume.)

We'd take turns huddling around this fire like a bunch of hobos, but it did little aside from making our clothes smell like a campfire.

Preparing for departure around the block.

Cops and Robbers: the Dynamic Duo

Kris is having a lot of fun, here.

Trying to hunt down Alayna (who had run off across the street with some other girls to score some candy.)

Not a lot of folks out and about this evening, that's for damn sure.  As you can see from the picture, here, the grass was starting to get frosted with snow as the temperature continued to drop.  Eventually, the rain completely turned to snow. . . which, you know, is frickin' terrific when you're trying to do something outside with your kids.

This was pretty good for an amber.  Though, as cold as it was outside, I probably should've been drinking a stout.

Later that night, after we returned home so the kids could eat some candy and watch a Halloween movie - you know, 'cause traditions and all that - I let the dog outside to go to the bathroom, and beheld this foreboding spectacle in my backyard.  And so it begins. . .

 - Brian

31 Years

Well, it's that time of year again. The anniversary of the day I came out of my mom.

I'm 31 Goddamn years old today. Hooray for me.

The only good thing about turning 31 is that I'm not turning 30, so, while I am one year closer to the dreaded 4-0, I'm not having to go through that whole ordeal of entering a new decade of age. That's a pain in the ass I don't want to have to do again for a long, long time (say, nine years).

So, this year wasn't as bad for me. I still stocked up on my ritual half-gallon of Sailor Jerry, and I still devoted a good portion of my day playing vintage video games and watching old cartoons from the '80s, but not nearly as much, and I wasn't morosely depressed to the degree I was last year. We also went shopping and went out to eat - so all in all it was a good day.

...and Kris made pirate cupcakes this year. I love pirates.

- Ol' Man Hough

Abby's 1st Christmas (Observed)

Well, with Black Friday over with, despite the holiday season going into the final stretch, things have been relatively laid back and calm around here lately. As I told you folks before, we've been over and done with 95% of your holiday shopping for over a month, so with the exception of Black Friday and a few random items Kris picked up while braving the morning's madness, we haven't had to pick anything else up.



We're leaving for Michigan in three days. Once I get out of work on Wednesday, I'm going to head back to the house, we're going to do a once-over of the house making sure everything's locked up and shut off, and we're going to set out for northern Georgia where we've reserved a hotel room (my goal is to get there by 2am).


Seeing how our trip is a few days off and all, we've been preparing like crazy for the two days in a car with a toddler and an infant. I've created a few different custom DVDs for the girls in order to keep them occupied on the road, made up of all the old school, classic Christmas specials from back in the 80s. Old Disney cartoons, the Muppets, Sesame Street, etc. The usual. We're bringing a case full of movies for them, too - Disney movies, SpongeBob, Yo Gabba Gabba, Christmas classics, etc.



I'm being an optimist and am also throwing in the Indiana Jones and original Star Wars trilogies, as well as the Arrested Development series... but more likely than not I'm never going to get a chance of watching them.



Anyway, seeing how we're leaving in a few days for a slew of family Christmases, we opted to have our own, immediate family Christmas at home with the girls. Something low key that would prevent us from having to haul all of our presents for the girls all the way up to Michigan just to turn around and bring them all the way back.

That would've been stupid.

So we had the girls open up their stockings and their gifts from us. Abby probably didn't know anything was out of the ordinary when she got up in the morning, but Cannonball sure enough freaked out when she saw everything under the tree. Always cool to see kids have fun celebrating the true meaning of Christmas...




Kris and I, according to Hough tradition, exchanged this year's annual Christmas ornaments. Every year since we came back from Shittsville (a.k.a. Ghana), we've bought each other a Hallmark ornament for our tree. At first, this came from necessity, as we had no ornaments ourselves and were in need of building up a collection.

Now, as we've abolished our Charlie Brown Christmas tree to Hades and have upgraded to a fancy, taller tree, we're still in need of additional ornaments to fill in all the new space. This year, I got Kris a UNICEF ornament (fitting her personality), and she got me a Muppets ornament (fitting to my personality). Everybody wins.

I had no idea a two year old could take so long opening presents. We were sitting on the floor in front of that stupid tree for a solid two hours opening gifts.


As can be expected, the boxes the presents came from were as big a hit as the gifts themselves... and every time a gift was opened, it had to be played with and mauled until one of us tore it away from them and kept the gift-giving momentum going. This isn't a huge deal if one kid's doing it, and everybody else has stuff to open, but after awhile it all came down to two adults waiting on a two year old to open her next gift, while the 7 month old shoved copious amounts of wrapping paper in her mouth.


Abby didn't get a whole hell of a lot to open Christmas morning (observed) from us this year (no offense, kid). Like I said before, we put about 80% of the money we spent on her this year directly into her credit union savings account. Maybe not a 'fun' thing to do, but she's got all of Alayna's old crap lying around the house, and all she wants to do with anything anyway is shove it in her mouth and drool all over it.

Did I mention she's sitting upright now? Pretty sure I did. Anyway, she's sitting up now. Falls down a lot, and she's hit her head so much I'm pretty sure I can safely rule out medical or law school in this girl's future, but she is sitting up. Huzzah.


Alayna's main gift from us, that Fisher Price iXL thing I was talking to you about before (think iPad for toddlers), was a pretty big hit. It's a complex, little piece of hardware, but she seems to already have the jist (gist?) of it. She's been raised around cell phones, iPods, and the like, so she's probably more proficient than most when it comes to handheld electronics.

...I don't know if that's really, really cool or really, really lame.

Yulin',

- Brian