The Houghs: The Most Boring Month of the Year

Napping dogs. Business as usual.

Good God. January is boring.

Nothing really went down this month at all, folks. Aside from Abby's pom routines, and some friend hangouts on the weekends, we didn't really do much this month. . . which is pretty typical for January, honestly. After the Holidays wind down and we all head back into our routines, the drudgery of winter really sits in. We haven't had much snow this month - not a single, Goddamn Snow Day this month, if you can believe that - but what snow we did get hasn't melted at all because it's not reached above 18 degrees all month. This has been a cold, boring, hellscape of a month.

That being said, I'm sharing with you some pictures and video that we took this month, mostly of weekends and crap like that. A lot of dog pics this time around, because Kris and the girls - whose pictures I regularly collect - take lots of pics of the damn dogs.

Enjoy. . .

Samson and Watson, as photographed by Alayna's friend, Ava.

(Probably begging for food, here. . . that'd be my guess.)

Both dogs continuously fight over this random, stuffed dinosaur that one of 'em got in a stocking at Christmas. This is a pretty common occurrence around these parts.

Most of January looked like this. Snow on the ground, freezing temperatures, but nothing worthy of calling off of school (unfortunately.)

The Johnsons took Abby skating with them one weekend, towards the beginning of the month. She enjoyed it, which is more than I can say for myself - I despise ice skating.

Finally wore Kris down to try fish this month - bought some cod at Meijer. We've all attempted to start off the New Year eating healthy, and fish is a great, healthy protein source. I've lost five pounds this month, which isn't a bad start for my age.

More dog shenanigans.

Kris took this picture to send to her sister, Jessica. Jes mailed this old Jem and the Holograms t-shirt to Alayna when she was like four years old, back when we lived in Florida. Alayna still wears it as a pajama shirt.

Abby documents Watson's obsession with the dinosaur.

Another shot of a lazy-ass dog. . .

Yours Truly, ukin' it up.

Haven't been record-shopping in awhile, but I popped into Radio Wasteland towards the beginning of the month to celebrate their 5th year anniversary of opening (only fitting, seeing how I was in the news story that covered the original event.) Bought a few used records, and this limited repressing of the only Pink Floyd album I can stand listening to (seeing how I'm a regular, Jim gave me the used vinyl free of charge, noting that it's the least he could do seeing how I made an ass of myself on local TV.)

The wives all went out one Saturday for a Mom's Night Out, leaving us dads to watch all of our damn kids over at the Colliers. Here's Danielle, Courtney, and Kris.

En route to a restaurant. . .

A big ol' gaggle of wives. Kris, Amy, Courtney, Stefanie, Susan, Mees, Danielle, Alicia, and Kelli.

As usual, the wives asked to have a group picture taken of them while they were out eating. . .

To make fun of them - as all good husbands should do - we took this one to copy them, right down to the posing. The position of the dads here actually matches up with our respective wives.

Throwin' darts in Collier's basement.

Abby made waffles one morning the girls had off of school (unfortunately my school district still had to report to work. . .)

Later on in the week, Abby's pom team performed at the half times of both Northeast/Mt. Pleasant basketball games.

(Abby's in the second row, center-right.)

More pictures of Samson lying around like a lazy bastard.

Decided to spin this limited release as a tribute to the demise of the 'Loaf.

Some random video we found on Abby's phone. . .

Build-a-Bear shenanigans over at the Johnson residence.

One weekend, half-way through the month, I deep-cleaned and reorganized the Captain's Quarters, my personal sanctuary/office in the house. Took all damn day, but the end results were definitely worth it.

The monitor second-from-left is for the VCR/DVD player and PS2. The one second-to-right is for the Atari, Nintendo 64, and my pre-Atari consoles, and the one at far right is for the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and Nintendo Switch. Just in case you were curious.

The work station, cleaned up and organized.

Abby decided to bake herself a cake one day after school. Did the whole thing from scratch. None of us figured it'd turn out that good, because Abby's cakes in the past have all been hot messes, but this one actually turned out. She feasted on it for weeks.

Costco's Kirkland line of off-brand spirits has been a god-send for our home bar: each label is identical to their more-expensive counterparts, but a half-gallon of the Kirkland option is about half the price of the originals. A half-gallon of their dark, spiced rum - identical to Captain Morgan - only costs $13. Their Irish Whiskey - a Jameson clone - is only $35. This alone justifies the annual cost of our Costco membership.

The third weekend of the month found us back over at the Colliers for an inner-circle hangout with three of the five main families of our friends group. Ella and Abby entertained themselves with the train set the Colliers have set up in their basement.