Back to the Usual Grind: September

Non- school-related employees, 'hard at work.'

What's up, readers.

The launch of this school year has been an absolute blood-bath.

Usually I have some kind of honeymoon period with school - where the students are still well-behaved and the workload is easy.  Not so much with this year.  Being the only veteran Social Studies teacher in 8th grade, I'm doing all the lesson planning, test creation, project development, and otherwise heavy lifting for four teachers.  Couple that with ongoing Covid nonsense and easily the most challenging group of students I've had in six year, my September has felt a hell of a lot more like my usual Aprils.  It's definitely going to be a long, long year of school.

Aside from my own, personal work drama, things are more the usual for September in the Hough Family:  the girls easily fell back into their school routine, and Kris - being the only one of us in a non-academic sphere (see above pic) - continued on as usual.  We don't do a hell of a lot during the month of September, because three of the four of us are undergoing a huge period of adjustment, and there's not a whole lot on our social calendars, so to speak.

That being said, we leave you now with a play-by-play of all the random stuff that went down this month.

Behold - the Hough's September, or Back to School Month. . .

The very first day of the month, the guys had their annual Fantasy Football Draft for their league.  As you may or may not remember, I was in this league for, like, one year, realized it was stupid, and stopped participating.  Ever since that first year of doing it, I've offered to help them out with the stickers so that they could focus on the draft itself.  This year they held their draft at some axe-throwing joint on M-20 - I would've taken pictures, but I was in full-blown grading mode and brought along a stack of paperwork with me to work on between drafts.

At the end of a long day of school, a casualty on the couch.

. . . at least she remembered to take her glasses off before conking out, right?

With the girls no longer really playing with toys, and having donated a bunch of their old games and craft activities to charity or fiends, Abby took it upon herself to remodel some of the basement shelving into her own personal art studio (which we were fine with - we're trying to encourage her drawing as much as possible.)

She's gotten pretty good over the last couple years.  And yes, that's a Virgil Q's Dixieland Kazoo Revue poster off to the left, there:  I found a stack in one on my old college totes, so both girls wanted one.  Whatever floats their boat, I guess. . . so long as they're not listening to any of the songs.  Ever.

Cards in the living room.

BP and his daughter, Delia, came up one weekend because Delia had a few soccer games at the Midland Soccer Complex.  They stayed in Clare at his folks' house, but after their games they hung out with us for awhile.  Kris took Delia and the girls out to the library in the afternoon, and BP and I dropped way more money than we should have at my favorite local business, Radio Wasteland.  Afterwards, we had a couple beers back at my house, then headed down Saginaw Road to hit up some food trucks.

They had like four or five trucks, some porta-potties, tables, some bounce houses, and stage with live music all set up down here (kinda where the old video store used to be, behind K-Mart.)  Not sure what it was all about, I didn't bother asking.

Everyone else got their food within minutes of queuing up in line, I'll go ahead and say that right now.  Then they all got to sit down, listen to music, and enjoy their food.  Everyone in our group - Kris, BP, Delia, our girls, Alayna's friend, Gabby. . . everyone.

. . . everyone but ME.  I was stupid and chose to hit up the sushi bowl truck.  I waited fifteen minutes before some cromagnon lady finally told us they ran out of rice and had to make some more.  By this point, I was already invested and decided to wait the twenty additional minutes for my food.  Well, they had two or three different rice cookers all crap out on them, but then waited an additional ten minutes to tell their customers waiting in line that they couldn't make more food.  By this point I had been waiting for about 45 minutes and was too pissed to eat anything else - everyone had been done for awhile - so we just left and I ate at home.

Abby and Delia, bein' weird.

Nails are a big deal in this house.

Enjoying the Holy Trinity on my front patio after I got out of work on Friday.

Mees, Courtney, Kris and Kelli.  The inner circle in our friend group all went out to eat for dinner later that night, sans the Larsons (who have Covid again.)  I forget the name of the joint we ate at, but it was pretty good - out on Poseyville Road, thereabouts.  Afterwards, we carpooled downtown and got drinks around the Commons while listening to live music.  I've spent far shittier evenings, I'll say that much.

The next morning.  Two dogs stand watch over our backyard, keeping us all safe from harm.

Later that afternoon, Alayna - with friends Lexi and Cristina - went to the Fashion Square Mall in Saginaw with Cristina's fam to hit up some shops.

My kids have good taste in music, what can I say. . .

We recently purchased a Haunted Mansion game for the Halloween season (which starts in late September around these parts - fight me.)

Kris and I spent about a half an hour reading through the instructions, trying to figure it out, before throwing in the towel.  The Amazon product reviews says the game is awesome, but the instructions are horse shit, and to just watch tutorials on Youtube in order to figure out the game, so we're gonna have to do that pretty soon.

Ella, Abby, and some other kid.  I'm assuming at school.

On weekday after work, I met Kris, Ella and Abby out at the Spirit Halloween store, off Tittabawassee Road in Saginaw.  They always have a pretty awesome setup out there.

(She must've taken all these pictures before I showed up - took me awhile to fight my way through traffic.)

On Kris' day off, her and Mees ran errands - and grabbed coffees - together while normal people spent their day contributing to society.

Picked this up one weekend.  I'm not huge on pumpkin beer unless it has some kind of a twist to it (a high abv, blended with some other flavor, etc.). The habanero twist to this one intrigued me, for sure.  I love me some spice.

Later that weekend, the Kimmels swung by to visit for the day.  They had been visiting other family in Michigan earlier in the weekend, and rolled into Midland Saturday afternoon.  After grabbing some craft beer at Cork and Ale, we came back to our house where Jon, being Jon, installed his baby seat in my Escape to see how much space it had.  I guess the Kimmels are in the market for a new SUV - theirs is small and therefore cramped with a baby seat - so they were thinking of Escapes, and were definitely impressed with mine.

Hank and Jon

Kimmel bought this for me, it was awesome.

A couple rye guys on the back patio.

Kris will hold a baby until you pry it from her clutching hands. . .

Changing a baby on the kitchen floor.  Why not.

These two have the same sized brain.

The next day, Kris and I took the girls out to do some shopping at Barnes and Noble (and of course Kris got suckered in to buying all the girls Starbucks while we were there.)

Sophie is staying with us this weekend because the Larsons, by this point no longer in quarantine, were away for their 15th anniversary.  They're taking our kids when we have our 15th anniversary weekend next month.

Devouring some manga books while we shop.  We had to stay until they finished the books - our girls can generally kill one of these in a half-hour or so.

Later that day, dissecting some kind of animal egg or something on the Johnson's driveway.  Kids are weird.

What is it?

Twin Day for Spirit Week.  Abby and Ella both sit on the Viking Student Council, though they're too young to run for an elected office yet, and the two of them spearheaded the days of Spirit Week this year.  They had a Disney Day, a crazy hair day, a twin day, a Viking day, etc. . . so of course every day they participated, and every day they had to meet up before school to go over their outfits.

Royal Arch Meeting at Lodge, the fourth Tuesday of the month (it's usually the third Monday, but a lot of our officers had to reschedule this month.)

While I was up there I took a few pictures of the art that covers some of the windows on the top floor of the Larkin Building.  I'm not sure when these were done, but I assume they're pretty old.  Here's the standard square-and-compass. . .

The Commandarie (Knights Templar)

Scottish Rite

. . . aaaaaand the frickin' Shriners.

Another loss for Northeast Football (that saw thee Vikings get their asses handed to them by Jefferson Middle, 63-0). . . but at least Abby and the Pom Team did well during halftime.

The Viking Pom Team. . . once again squinting into the sun.

One of the food trucks Kris hired for the church's friendship meals (or whatever they're called.). The church hires a food truck and gives away free food at a local park (well, they pay for the first 100 meals, then folks have to start buying them.)  Kris is taking on more responsibilities in the church now and is on a couple different planning committees, so she's doing church stuff a couple times a week sometimes.

- Brian