Yet the Houghs Prevail

'Cause Freedom.

Usually, Yours Truly starts off a July 4th blog with some fancy red, white and blue font.  Maybe a witty joke thrown in with a picture of Will Smith from Independence Day.

But I'm not going to do that this year.  'Cause frankly, I'm still a little annoyed with this year's Fourth of July festivities.

So the City of Clare - my hometown, if you'll be so good as to recall - decided, in its infinite wisdom, that they would suspend their annual firework display for the Fourth of July weekend.  They're reasoning?  They wanted to move the fireworks up a week or two, well into June, so that they went off during Clare's annual Summerfest.

Seriously.

Clare, get over yourself.  Your Summerfest sucks.

Who does something like that?  That's like imposing a city-wide ban on the selling of conifer trees during Christmas so that more people buy pine trees during Coniferfest (no, it doesn't really exist, but you could totally see Clare doing something that asinine, right?)

Anyway, there were no fireworks scheduled for the Fourth of July weekend in Clare, where we usually go to see them (from the comfort of my parents' back veranda) and Kris and I started to panic.  Where would we take our kids to see fireworks?  Definitely not Bay City or Saginaw, with their bottleneck traffic and hordes of unruly crowds.  Midland, perhaps?  They fire them off on the other side of the Tridge, and practically the whole city tries to squeeze into that one, small park on the other side of the river for them; it'd be maddening dealing with all that congestion, both in human and car form.  We automatically ruled out the satellite towns and villages, too - Sanford, Coleman, Farwell, etc. - because their firework display would be even shittier than Clare's.  Not worth the drive and headache.

Tents, cots, sleeping bags, and plenty of guns.  Ready for Trevor's.

Ultimately, we decided to drive up to Clare anyway, because my old buddy from high school, Trevor, invited us to go camping out at his place in the country.  We could break in our new camping gear and see some local fireworks over Littlefield Lake, where his cousin has a cabin.  Fireworks over a lake, from the comfy vantage of a pontoon boat, didn't sound half bad.

As we prepared for this undertaking, my stepmom suddenly called and invited us up to their house to enjoy the pool for the weekend, and to celebrate my birthday (I'm turning 26 this year - kind of a big deal.)  Hard to pass up something like that, and so before you knew it - BAM - we had a weekend full of festivities on our plate.

So here's how everything panned out in the end, folks.  Happy Fourth.

We arrived at Trevor's in Clare around 10am, and we quickly set about throwing up the tent and setting up all the cots and sleeping bags (so we didn't have to do it later in the evening when we ultimately returned.) He recommended a spot in the shade, far away from the bonfire we'd certainly be hanging around later that night so as to not wake up sleeping kids, but close enough to the house so that kids could use the bathroom if they needed to in the middle of the night.

I know I've shown you the tent before, but here it is again.  This time around, with Trevor helping me and having learned my lesson(s) from the first time we threw it up, we were able to put it up in no time.

We made it over to Dad and Cindy's house by 11am, and had a perfect sunny day in the forecast ahead of us.

Hough girls.

One of the kids - can't tell who - underwater dogpaddling swimming to Kris.

Keepin' it classy.

'Cause freedom.

Five hours and multiple sunburns later (mostly by me), a shadow falls over the pool and everyone heads upstairs for food. . .

My parents are really, really good at wrapping presents.  I think this was Dad's handiwork.

Maybe the coolest company name I've ever heard of.  Then again, I'm never heard of a company called Rockin' Pirate Nintendo Whiskey before.

Showing off the birthday card. . .

Aside from an Amazon card, the parents bought me a really cool globe decanter for my bar collection, which sets on a wooden stand and holds about a fifth of whiskey.

They even threw in a bottle of Maker's Mark so I could fill it.

Following an early dinner at Dad and Cindy's, we said our goodbyes and headed back over to Trevor and Sara's. . . where Sara was bandaging up her idiot husband's leg after a chainsaw accident.  Leave it to Trevor to injur himself with a piece of wood while weilding a chainsaw, and not the chainsaw itself.

"Uncle" Scrunge was there, too, and took up his usual mantle of 'Entertainer of Children' while the rest of us sat around and drank beer.  Not sure how he got stuck with that crap-end of the stick.

Watson enjoyed having a free run of the place, which I was a little apprehensive about at first, seeing how Trevor lives right off Mission Road and cars are always zooming by.  Our stupid dog seemed to acknowledge the eminent threat of death, though, and never got too close to the road.

Smoke bombs.  Never get old.

I could tell you horror stories about this house.  But I won't.

Lawn games. . . of some sort.  At one point, one of the girls threw a piece of rope with a ball attached at either end - kinda like a bolo - threough the air, and expertly hog-tied our dog while he was running past. If it had been intentional, I would have recommended that child been entered immediately into Rodeo School.

Trevor and Sara built a chicken coop on the property.  It doubles for a children's jail cell when the need arises.

We did a lot of this throughout the evening.  Or, I did, at any rate.

Of course there's a box of Bud Light in the tree.  That's normal, right?

This tent was a hit with the kids.  Who knows why.

Lighting the bonfire.

Scrunge thought ahead and had a cache of sparklers on hand.  At least someone had their parenting pants on. . .

He also had an assortment of Geod (sp?) rocks - one for each kid - that he'd split open for the girls and let them take home as a souvenir.

After several hours hanging around the bonfire after the kids fell asleep, we all turned in.  The next morning, the weather was awesome.  As usual, I was the first one up.

The morning sun, and Sean's creepy-ass wooden sculpture.

Still sleeping.

Still sleeping.

Still sleeping.

I have lazy roommates.

Following a gigantor breakfast of eggs, bacon, and several other heaping plates of awesomeness, the McNerney and Hough clans decided to take the kids into town to walk around a bit and check out some of the shops downtown.

The 515 art gallery downtown, founded by my old art teacher from high school.

Still think my bike's cooler.  Just sayin'.

"Here kids, pet these broken pieces of glass glued to the wall."

No idea who this random person is.

The Doherty.  The epicenter of our humble little town.

Letting the kids mess around with one of these things, which parents always make their kids pose in.

Like this.

Still just the City Bakery.  No amount of marketing is going to change that for me.  People lose their shit over a simple marketing gimmick and now the place owns half the downtown?  That shows you a.) the power of re-branding, and b.) how  dumb people are.

Strollin' down McEwan.

Some bitchin' bikes inside Ray's Bike Shop.

I never understood why Bob's Lounge has this humongous chicken standing out in front of it. . .

As we were walking around downtown, Abby broke one of her flip-flops, so we had to drive over to one of those low-end retail stores - fancier than a Family Dollar, but not as nice as, say, Kmart - in order to buy a new pair.  I forget the name of the place, but it used to be a Pamida.  Sort of akin to a Big Wheel,if you remember those from the '80s.

Abby having been successfully cobbled, we met back up with Trevor and Co. at this Nitrogen ice cream joint that's now standing where Grit's (a friend of ours from high school)  dad used to run a small grocery store back in the day.

This was the most random store I've ever been in.  By far.  You'll see the decorative plaque section there off to the left, and the ice creamery there to the right.  'Cause sometimes when people go out for ice cream, they kinda feel like getting something engraved on a frickin' plaque.

Waiting for the machines to warm up (or cool down, as it were.)  Check out the cigarette and lotto section of the store in the background. . . because clearly cigarettes and lotto tickets go hand-in-hand with ice cream and engraved trophies.

Pretty weird how science works.  I never did well in science class.

Look - you can also buy groceries while you wait for your nitrogen ice cream and/or award engraving.  After checking some of the expiration dates on these sad, sad shelves of leftover food items, I came to the conclusion that these were the leftover, unpurchased items from the Chamberlain family's old store (which, if memory serves correct, closed in the late '90s.)  Seriously.  Some of these food items expired in the NINETIES.

Took awhile, but eventually the kids got their hard-earned bizarro-treats. . .

We let the kids swim a bit back at the McNerney's, as the weather was awesome and they had been bugging us for it all morning, and while they did that I got to drive around on Trevor's riding lawnmower and touch up his lawn. . .

I want one of these.

Thug life.

Red, white and done.  This about sums up how everyone was feeling by late afternoon, so Kris and I tore down our campsite, loaded up the van, and headed back towards Midland.  We had to drive fast, 'cause Kris had to pick up her prescription from the CVS in Midland before they closed at 6pm (since the following day would be July 4th.)  We left Trevor's at 5:25pm, so we'd be cutting it really, really close.

That's how it's done, folks.

The next morning, July 4th, Abby decided to walk around with a digital camera she claimed from Granny's and take pictures around the house.  Great way to start your morning.

Of course you need a picture of this.

Kris and I weren't able to go see the fireworks with Trevor and Sara at Littlefield Lake, 'cause we didn't end up staying two nights in Clare, so Kris spent the day looking around for an alternative. She came to the ultimate conclusion that if we were going to see fireworks on Independence Day - and you kinda have to when you have little kids - we'd have to go downtown for Midland's firework show.  We decided to camp out by the Courthouse instead of dealing with the bulk of the crowds on the other side of the river, due to the crowd congestion on the Tridge and the park beyond.

We got there by about 7:30pm, and the fireworks were scheduled to start at 'sundown.'  While we waited, Abby's lose tooth finally fell out. . . which she was pretty pumped about.

Abby brought along her camera from Granny's and kept herself occupied by taking a ridiculous amount of selfies. . .

(Kris takes selfies, too.)

This kid, with her massive bubble-making wands, kept people (especially kids) entertained while we sat around waiting for the fireworks to begin.

Abby and her signature 'fancy pose.'

An hour and a half later.  Still waiting.

You have to look closely, but there are five floating lanterns in this picture.  Someone kept lighting them off on the park  below, on the other side of the Tridge, where they'd float up and pass over us.  Again, something to keep the masses of people waiting for fireworks somewhat occupied.

I wish I would have taken a picture of it later, but this floating lantern shown here, moments later, crashed down onto the grass by a group of people and fire spewed out onto the grass.  A few 'heroic' dads proceeded to awkwardly stamped it out.  And the Fourth was saved.

A nice, older lady sitting nearby was passing these out to all the kids in the area - who were all getting restless for the fireworks to begin, having waited for nearly two hours.  This bought us some time.

At sundown, there was still no fireworks, and everyone was grumbling.  Our kids, as well as all the dozens of kids sitting around us, were all losing their shit, and I was about ready to call it a night and cut our losses.  Eventually, after 10:00pm (seriously), the fireworks began, and, to Midland's credit, it was a pretty good show (and long - I haven't seen a firework show that long outside of Disney World.)  The kids thoroughly enjoyed it. . . thank God.

I didn't take any pictures of the fireworks themselves, because over the years I've realized that one never goes back and looks at those and thinks,"Yeah, I remember those - those were great!"  It's better to just watch them and not stress out over capturing them with a frickin' camera.  So, instead, here's a picture of fireworks taken off of Google.  Enjoy.

- Brian