January: The Month Nothing Happened

Weird.

So we're one month into the new year, and things look. . . well, pretty boring.

Not that that should shock anyone, really - January is notoriously low-key.  Middle of the winter, void of holidays or days off, everyone still dazed and shell-shocked from December's Holiday Gauntlet.  The kids went back to school, I went back to school, and - like September - the month more or less just comprised of the Grind and getting back to normalcy.

As such, things have been quiet around here.  The Houghs haven't done shit lately.

This sign was on Abby's door New Year's Eve.

We're not big on New Year's Resolutions around these parts, which January is arguably most known for; I know that's some folks' thing, but we Houghs tend to see the writing on the wall when it comes to 'fresh starts' and 'starting over.'  We know that pledging to finally get in shape is, most likely, a fool's errand for us:  if it hasn't happened by now, it's probably not going to.  Not with beer and snacks and couches and Netflix so frickin' awesome.

Anyway, here's your monthly installment of all things Hough, the January Edition.

See ya later. . .

My old winter coat from college - now known as my snow-shoveling coat - wins a couple more fans.

Abby approves of her new sequin mini-skirt.

A year ago, Radio Wasteland opened up in town (you may or not remember my lackluster performance while being interviewed for the event on NBC 25), and the second Saturday of the month they hosted a party commemorating their 1st Birthday. 

I wasn't going to go (I've spent a little too much on vinyl these last couple months, honestly), but they had a few raffle giveaways (see above) and some other promotions they were running, so I changed my mind later on in the morning and made my way down there.

I didn't win anything (unfortunately), but I did pick up five or six solid albums and scored some free merch from Discogs in the process.  Hooray for free shit.

Alayna's bedroom door.  Yes, we're already to that point.

At a family dinner over at Mom's, getting some cousin-bonding in.  Alayna's pretty indifferent when it comes to all of her little cousins (see sign on her bedroom door in the previous picture), but Abby really likes holding the twins.

Grandma wrangles some grandkids.

Bunch o' Houghs

Samwise is a perv.

Our resident Star Wars fan (aside from Yours Truly, obviously.) 

Speak Out: Kids vs. Parents.  One of the scariest games your family will ever play.

Guinness limited release, in commemorative vintage packaging and cans?  Can life get any more rad?

Alayna went out to the Midland Mall with some of her squad to celebrate her friend Alaina's birthday.  I'm SOOO glad I wasn't involved with this.

Maddie and the Cannonball, getting some nails done.

With her friend, Dani.

Blowing through some gift cards at Target.

I took this off some Mid-Michigander's Facebook post, but it accurately sums up what the weather was doing up here half-way through the month. Hoth-like conditions, followed by a day of low-60s awesomeness, then another crapload of snow and coldness.  Go home, Michigan, you're drunk.

Both girls have been assigned Chromebooks this year, so they bring them home every day from school and are responsible for their well-being (they're both pretty good with technology - I'd like to think I had a hand in that.)  Alayna usually has homework assignments and leftover work she has to do via Google Classroom (which I use religiously in my school, too), but Abby is tasked with just learning the ins and outs of basic computer use.  Kids today are f***ing spoiled. 

This month saw a surge in popularity of this obscure Google Arts & Culture app - it was all over social media and the Internet, with people uploading pictures of themselves matched up with existing portraits in museums throughout the world.  Sometimes the matched results are hilariously bad, but other times they're eerily accurate.  Here's the Cannonball's pairing. . .

At least they got the bags under my eyes right. . .

. . . aaaand here's Abby's.  Kris never got around to doing it, because as the rest of us were all fine with taking pictures of ourselves sitting around in the morning, unshowered and still in our pajamas, Kris wanted to do her makeup first and make sure she looked good. As such, she never got around to it.

The girls 'teach' Watson a 'new trick,' which is more or less just teasing him with his favorite squeak toy.

Some joint in the mall was dishing out free Henna tattoos for some kids event later on in the month.  I have no idea what any of this was, as I wasn't there.  My apologies.

Kris took the girls and their friend, Sophie, out to see The Greatest Showman at the Midland Cinemas.  Everyone was hyper and all over the place, but the theater was experiencing trouble with their projector.  Kris had to endure 45 minutes of trying to keep three kids from totally losing their shit before the theater apologized, refunded everyone their money, and closed the show.  You can imagine how happy I was that I skipped out on that family 'adventure,' too.

The last week of the month, Alayna's Girl Scout troop cooked, prepared, and served a dinner to all their families in the basement of some church on Ashman St (I forget the name of it, but it's the same church where I fruitlessly voted for Bernie Sanders and, later, Gary Johnson, back in 2016.)  It was a cute outing, the girls really got into it and Alayna was pretty proud of herself.

Alayna and her friend, Sam, gather up drinks for their respective families (whom we were sitting at a table with.)

As an added bonus, Alayna made sure that while they were arranging fake flowers on all the tables, she swiped all the fake lilies and placed them facing the seat she wanted Kris to sit at (they're Kris' favorite.)  Needless to say, I heard more than once the whole 'at least SOMEONE gets me flowers' speech.

- Brian

The Five Minutes That Was August

Welcome back to the Land of Houghs.

August flew by in, like, five minutes.  I kid you not.

I've previously mentioned how frickin' busy we've been with Back to School crap, but I want to emphasize that since Yours Truly is a teacher, Back to School season becomes exponentially more hectic.  That's all I've been doing lately - lesson planning, buying stuff for my classroom, moving stuff around in and decorating my classroom, etc. etc.  Besides some vacations and highlights here and there - most of which we've delved into in other posts - August ended up being a very mundane, if not SHORT, month.

Here's a snippet of some of the crap that we didn't touch on in other posts, though.

Enjoy. . .

We bought a new grill at the beginning of the month, which was awesome.  After weeks of research, I settled on this copper-toned Webber grill, which is the deluxe version of their famous model (it comes with a temp guage and an ash-removing tray - both super-handy features.)

. . . obviously I bought a crapload of accessories for it as well.

Found an old box of cassettes in the basement, and finally got around to hooking up a pretty high-end dual-cassette player to my stereo receiver.  Kris wasn't a big fan of this new set-up initially, but I'm sure it'll grow on her (I might have to make her a mix-tape to seal the deal with this, we'll see. . .)

I bought this tape from a Big Wheel store in Clare back in 1993, based solely on the front image alone.  The lyrics were terrible, and Dad ended up confiscating the cassette from me when I was young, finally giving it back to me when I was in my teens and no longer thought the music was good (it was terrible.)  Oddly enough, I still have this cassette, which I'm going to have to get around listening to again in the future.  I doubt it holds up, though.

The first week of August, Dad and I decided to tackle the boxes and boxes of photos that Granny had in her basement.  This would end up being one hell of an undertaking, but we both had the time off of work, so we rolled up our sleeves and spent an entire day sorting through papers, pictures, negatives, and other random bullshit that hadn't gotten picked up when we all went through her house back in March.  Like, say, this horrifically racist 'Get Well' card from the 1930s. . .

Grandpa Hough apparentely wasn't a big fan of the church back in 1928. . . he must've written this when he was a kid, long before he ended up being a minister in the exact same church.  Kinda funny.

Some of the pictures Dad gave me from Granny's - he wanted me to have all the pre-divorce pictures that Granny had of our family, so I was able to separate them by year and now have the awesome task of scanning each and every one of them (whenever my work load slows down and I have a chance to breathe. . .)

It wouldn't be a trip to Granny's without Yours Truly loading up another van-load of stolen plunder, like this solid-oak, 12-person kitchen table.  Definitely a step up from what we had before.

Swimming at Stratford Park again - one of the girls' favorite summer hang-out spots.

This old lady turned 35 this year (and this is what passes for a birthday cake around these parts.)

Bedtime reading (Abby's really taken off with reading - she took to it a lot faster than her sister did, and Alayna was at the top of her class for it.)

More beach time - we ended up going there at least once a day for a week or two in August, just to break up the day (like I said before, it's a 3-minute drive from our house.)

Grandma Jordan swung out one day to stop in for a visit. . .

. . . and an apparent makeover.

. . . and a tea party.

My new school only gives teachers desktop computers, so I went out and bought an Acer Chromebook that was insanely high-rated on nearly every site I researched.  Since 95% of my work is done via Google Office and Google Classroom, I don't need the storage capacity of a traditional laptop, nor the processing power, so the Chromebook was the optimal choice.  I still plan on replacing my MacBook Pro in a year or two with a fancy new iMac, but this will definitely get me by in the meantime.

Trevor and Sara drove down from Clare one Saturday with their kids to hang out and spend the night at our house like we had done at theirs (back in July, around the Fourth, if you'll remember.)  They showed up right after lunch, so we decided to take the kids down to the park to swim and play in the sand for a couple hours while we caught up and had some beers on the beach.

Good ol' Trevor McNerney.

Okay, so this picture wasn't supposed to be of Kris, folks.  No, this picture - which I took on the sly - was meant to be of the guy off to the right.  If you look closely, he's holding up a FRICKIN' FISH to his mouth and rapping into it like it's a microphone.  I want to be this guy's best friend SO bad. . .

Drying off time

 

Grillin' up some dead animals back at the house (our grill's maiden voyage, actually.)

Kid section

After-dinner catfight

Forts in the basement.  Never gets old.

Alayna bought this chair with her own money from a Salvation Army for $5, and it has become her favorite reading spot in the house.

Go Lions

We're planning on buying a house this winter/spring, and have informed the kids of this in the past, so Abby decided to help us out and draw us a detailed side-view diagram of the exact house she's looking for.  Hopefully she relayed this information to Kris so that she can scope it out on Zillow.

Just another day in the Hough house. . .

Lunch at Jimmy John's on the way home from church. . .

(You can see Kris in the background, placing her order. . . and simultaneously pretending she doesn't know the children climbing around in the restaurant.) 

At a neighborhood party at one of the houses down the road. . .

Ivy Lane squad

No, there's no booze in this - they were handing out shot-glasses of water.  Give us some credit, Internet.

At Plymouth Park for a play date with Alayna's friend, Samantha

The kids in the neighborhood had organized a 'parade' (yes, seriously) one afternoon.  No idea what it was for, but this is what it basically entailed.

A Mercedes-Benz, several kids on bikes. . . and no floats.

But then this.

- Brian