...aaaaaaand That Was January.

2016 marked the coldest start of the year for the Hough family since 2006.  Our Floridian blood, still not accustomed to the frigid tundra of Central Michigan, has made this winter particularly brutal (despite everybody and their brother saying, "this is a mild winter, guys.")

With the Holiday Season officially behind us, everyday usualness returned in due order.  Kris and I went back to work, the kids went back to school, and time slowed down.  A lot.  While not seeming as long and dull as, say, August, January is still a far cry from the three-day-long month of December.  As you can see from the pictures that follow, we didn't do too much outside of the usual grind (which definitely stands in stark contrast with the previous two months.)

Check it out. . .

Came down into the basement to find the girls playing with a bizarro-mix of Playmobil and toy dinosaurs, chanting "SACRIFICE! SACRIFICE! SACRIFICE!" over and over and over again.  Nothing creepy about that.  At all.

Reenacting Abby's favorite Star Wars movie, The Return of the Jedi, with some of her Christmas loot. . .

I forget what, exactly, she was pissed about, but one morning Abby decided to boycott our family breakfast and seek solitude instead out on the back patio.  In the middle of winter.  In her Darth Vader pajamas.

It had been awhile since I had gone vinyl record shopping, and the itch was starting to get to me.  While Kris and the girls were off visiting her mom in Clare one Saturday, Yours Truly hit up three different thrift shops in Midland over the course of a couple hours on a quest for new jams. . . 

I ended up spending a total of $12, and scored 8 LPs and three 4-record box sets (all, surprisingly enough, in Near Mint playable condition), two books, and one old PS2 game for the girls.  It took a little conversational prowess with a flirtatious girl at the register in order to get that price, but at the end of the day I was able to walk away with a pretty sound collection of plunder (mostly classical.)

(FYI - those Tijuana albums are GOLD.  Especially that Tijuana Christmas LP. . . I imagine that gem will get some pretty heavy rotation next Holiday season. . .)

The boxed sets

See that Bird Sounds boxed set at the right in the previous picture?  The records inside are slightly smaller than your usual 33 RPM, and are insanely flexible, which I've never seen before.  Kinda weird, but the kids get a kick out of them. . .

Another retro videogaming session, featuring the NES and PS2.

Dad and Cindy got me a Bose Color Soundlink bluetooth speaker for Christmas this year, and while it was the color that I wanted (standard black), I felt that the speaker could use some definite 'snazzin'' up.  I therefore bought this leather, Old World-styled case off Amazon, and the sum'bitch fits like a glove. . .

The cut-away areas accommodate all the usual plug-in areas for chords, as well as buttons, and there's a protective mesh covering for the speaker faces, meaning I can keep this thing on at all times and further protect my speaker.  To make things even more awesome, even with this protective case on, the speaker still fits in my foam-fitted, hardshell zip-up case I have for the speaker and chords.  Consider this Nerding Out at a Master Level. 

Kris recently started a new series of books with the girls as part of their nightly, wind-down, reading session:  Baum's Oz series.  The Wizard of Oz - the most prolific book in the series - is the first book, but there's, like, twenty or so books that follow it.  So far the girls are really into it, so we'll see if Kris can complete the entire run.

Our basement, on any given weekday.

The girls had a weekday School event at the Roll Arena a couple weeks ago:  Chestnut Hill rented out the entire place and the girls were able to skate around (or awkwardly try to do so, at any rate) with their friends from school.

Abby spent more time on the planks than her sister did, as the Cannonball was too busy socializing and ohmygoshing with her friends from school around the arcade and ticket-spewing games. . .

Winning some tickets with one of her friends from class. . .

Abby wasn't very happy with her sister's lack of enthusiasm for skating. . .

Kris showed up after she got out of work, just in time to get some usual scolding in. . .

Waiting for the doc at the Pediatrician's Office (they let kids pick out out a free book to take home, so Alayna scored herself a National Geographic reader about Sharks.)  Alayna had been complaining about her stomach on and off for a couple weeks, and the night before we took her in she actually woke up crying due to the pain.  The docs where we take her (I forget the name of the place) are pretty thorough, and they determined her stomach pains were caused by her switching back to dairy milk after years of drinking soy.  Consequently, Alayna was put on a two-week, no-dairy diet, which eventually cured her of those nasty stomach pains. 

Dolled up and ready for school (usually Kris takes the girls to school in the morning, so I wasn't sure if the make up thing was even allowed.  They eventually talked me into it.)

Some creepy Spanish poster at work, featuring that "know what I mean, Vern?" actor.  Ernest, I think.  Right?

Playing in the snow in the back/side yard

No idea why she's so happy - it's cold as shit out.

I had been out there shoveling the driveway and decided to have a pipe so I could watch the kids frolic in the snow like a couple of idiots.

Abby moves in for the kill, snowball in hand.  Even at close range, her aim is comically terrible.

The onset of another lightsaber battle in the basement, exchanging some Force throws/pushes. . .

(It should go without saying that this is one of Abby's favorite past times. . .)

. . . and no, you can't borrow my shirt.

I hate kids.

- Brian

Caesar's Randoms

Hey fans.

July was a crazy month, wasn't it?  We thought so.  We celebrated 'Murica Day, a few birthdays, reunited with the infamous Sausage Pad on the Muskegon River, reunited with all of our extended family up on Eight Point Lake, and basically got our feet wet with the whole 'Michigan Summer' thing.

Here's a brief look at some of the stuff that took place around these parts over the course of the last few weeks.

Enjoy:

Kris let the girls 'decorate the basement' for my 26th Birthday. . .

Watching Star Wars on VHS and enjoying a morning cup of coffee on my birthday (admit this is the greatest entertainment center you've ever seen. . .)

We decided to host the whole family at our house for dinner and drinks later in the afternoon/early evening, to show people the house, meet Chris' new girlfriend, Nicole, and otherwise celebrate my big 2-6.

Some store-bought (unhealthy) and homemade (extremely healthy) Asian food (we're big fans of ethnic foods in this joint.)

Hanging out with Cousin Owen (Jeff's son) - the sole heir to the Hough name (unless my kids grow a pair and demand to keep their last name when they get married.)

Messing with Scarlett (Jeff's oldest.)

Grandma and a bunch of Aryan children (technically they're Anglo-Saxon, but let's not split hairs, here.)

Getting ready for after-dinner shenanigans. . .

Introducing Scarlett to the joy of lightsaber dueling (you can never start them too young, obviously.)

(You're doing it wrong.)

Grandparents make the weirdest faces.

Uncle Chris takes a saber to the face.

My war injury from the Sausage Pad Tubing Adventure.  Still looking like pure shit.

This dog can't get enough of sleeping in the sun.  He gets it from me.

See my library, off the right, there?  That's about 1/3 of what I had a year ago: I purged half of my library last summer, when I brought home my classroom library from school (which was the same size as my library at home), then another load shortly after the Holidays.  Finally, I got rid of another four boxes worth of books (which was incredibly difficult to do, I'll point out), after carrying all of it down a flight of stairs.  For the next year, they'll remain boxed on those steel shelves, as I have no other place to put them.  I figure when it comes time to actually buy a house, I'll build a series of bookshelves built into our house, like we did in our old house.

She fell out of bed.  Please don't call CPS.

Checking out the ice cream joint around the corner from our house. . .

I hate giving my kids sugar in public - they always turn into a couple of assholes.

After years of hearing people call pop 'soda,' it has been incredibly refreshing to see signs like this wherever you go.

Twister is nowhere near as fun as it was when you were a kid.  At least for us out-of-shape sorts.

Abby plays Barbie Supermodel on my Sega Genesis.  

Don't piss off the Cannonball in Chess. . .

Abby's trying to learn how to play, but she doesn't have the logical inclination - or patience - like her sister does.  I think she's going to be more into stuff like 'sports' or 'drag racing.'

This process takes twenty minutes.  At least.

Find the dog.

How I've been spending my afternoons. . .

There was a big, block party for our immediate community towards the end of the month - something the locals have been doing for years, I guess.  They rent out a bunch of tables, everyone brings a dish, and people chow down and hang out.  We forgot all about this, so we came late as to not eat other people's food.  Tim and Julie - our neighbors directly across the street - showed up, and Tim pulled all the neighborhood kids in his homemade train (a series of painted barrels he pulls behind a riding lawn mower.)

This small park is sandwiched right in the heart of the block, so instead of people's backyards facing each other, they face a park. . . which is kinda cool.  Our house is a corner house, so unfortunately we don't have this luxury.

That's the girls' friend Reba pushing Alayna (she's Abby's age.)

Not a fan of the monkey bars. . .

One of the elder statesmen in the community brought a few coolers full of water balloons for the kids to play games with. . .

. . . which, quite predictably, ended in all-out chaos and anarchy.

Lord of the Flies

Alayna wanted no part of the water balloon fun, but Abby sure as hell did (no shocker there.)  Here she is sneaking up to drench her sister. . .

(. . . she's not very good at this.)

Once the kids ran out of ammunition, it was time for another 'train' ride (that's our kids, there, in the front.)

Walking the dog back across Midland's famous Tridge after checking out the Dog Park they have down there.  Watson was, as usual, more than happy to make a god-awful amount of noise playing with the other dogs down there.

After staying the night at Grandma and Papa John's, the girls were taken out to the 'Thumb' (Michigan-speak for a genuine, geographic region, believe it or not) to some random beach on Lake Huron for a day in the sun. . .

The kids were pleasantly surprised that the water wasn't salty. . . or filled with man-eating sharks, unlike the beaches they used to frequent in Florida.

I never saw the fun in this.

Making friends with random kids.

I guess they sculpted the Trash Heap from Fraggle Rock. . .?

Back to School shopping for Kindergarten and Second Grade. . . already.

One more month of Summer remains before we're free of having kids running around our house.  Let the countdown begin. . .

- Brian