June (Besides the Other Stuff)

What's up, America.

Well, as you've all seen so far, this month has been pretty crazy.  Wrapping up the School Year dominates the first part of the month - the girls and i all have blinders on until the year wraps up - and after the dust settled from running that gauntlet, we went in to scramble mode to prepare for the highlight of the month (if not summer):  our Vacation to Florida.

As you know, we spent nine days down there, so by the time we were done with that we only had a week or so left in the month.  Honestly when all's said and done, we didn't really do a whole hell of a lot in our down time this month. . . mainly because we didn't really have any downtime.

And so, with that, I will leave you know with some pics (and video) of some of the remaining, random stuff that happened to the Houghs in the month of June.

Enjoy.

This is what happens when dad and the girls go grocery shopping unattended.  You can imagine how thrilled Kris was with this haul.

At the close of another school year.  After dismissing my students for the last time, and packing up the room as best as possible, I hit the lights off for the last time and got the hell out of dodge.

I usually let my kids graffiti my white board on the last day.  I'm sure the custodians love cleaning up this crap every summer.

The rest of my Social Studies Department showed their appreciation for me after I spent the entirety of the school year lesson planning on all their classes - presentations, edited videos, planned assessments, handouts, lesson pacing, you name it - by presenting me with a hefty gift certificate for Cork and Ale (my favorite liquor/beer store.)  They know me well.

Abby's new favorite past-time is destroying her glasses.  We're a big fan of dropping these off to the optometrist every other week to have them fixed.  We're NEVER buying her wire frames again. . .

Breaking out the cornhole boards for the first time this summer.  The boards themselves - which are gorgeous, by the way - are perfect, but our bags (despite being regulation) are heavy as hell and not broken in at all, so they're difficult to throw and they bounce off the boards easy.  We're definitely going to need to break these suckers in this summer. 

(The girls are slowly improving.)

Arguably the best purchase I've made in a long, long time, I picked up this GoPro for our Florida trip, and it definitely came in handy for all the water stuff we did.  It came with a shit-load of accessories, which I rarely use and can't figure out how to work.

While visiting her mom one weekend (to deliver a pet cat for her. . . seriously), Kris was rear-ended in Clare by a deaf guy.  You can't make this shit up.  Instead of reporting the incident to our insurance provider, Kris had her best friend Kim's husband, Matt, pop the dent out (he works on cars, fortunately, and was able to touch it up to the point where you wouldn't be able to tell there had been any issue in the first place.)

Every Thursday in the first half of the the summer, the City of Midland hosts Tunes By the Tridge:  they have multiple food trucks, kiosks, activities for kids, and - of course - live music.  You just bring a cooler, a camping chair, and some sunscreen and spend a few hours hanging out down by the river.  Not a bad way to spend a Thursday evening.

Ella, Sophie and Abby were called up to the stage (along with a bunch of other kids) during a song to do some dancing (if you could call it that.)

While the wives and kids hung out down by the river, the Dads all ventured up to Main Street periodically to stock up on drinks (most of the bars downtown in The Commons allow you to order 'drinks to go,' which is handy.)

Erik and Morgan, waiting for the other dads to grab their orders.

Setting back off towards the river.

Our route to and from The Commons to the riverside always took us past the 'secret' entrance to me and Erik's lodge, which we always enjoy pointing out to our non-Mason buddies.

A little while later, getting another round of drinks on Main Street.

The Moms.

Packing up at the close of the evening. . .

The music was still going, but we wanted to beat the traffic out of there.

Kids were exhausted, too.

In preparation for this year's ridiculously HOT trip to Florida, I bought myself a Yeti for use in the parks.  And you bet your ass I had it personalized (with my family coat of arms on one side and my nickname on the other.)

Dropping the dynamic duo off at Shelby's in Coleman (the lady who runs it does a great job with our boys while we're away) the evening before we left for Florida.  Our dogs, as seen here, usually get pretty upset when we initially drop them off, but they have a good time after awhile.

Upon our return from Florida, Kris went to war with our front garden bed.  We had a lot of Snow-on-the-Mountain growing all up in it, a ground cover that spreads quickly and is a pain in the ass to kill, so eventually we had to destroy the whole bed and start from scratch.  It actually got to the point where we had to hire a professional gardener to come in and help us out.  I hate this kinda stuff - anything beyond mowing the grass is not in my wheelhouse.

Another Thursday, another Tunes-By-the-Tridge hangout.

After hanging out there for awhile and elderly woman wielding an SLR that, I'm sure, was heavier than her, approached me and handed me this piece of paper.  I guess she covers these events during the summer. . .

This was her picture she took of us.  I look like my f***ing grandfather in this picture.

Getting more drinks on Main Street with the dads (you can see our Lodge building in the background here.)

Erik hits up a truck for some tacos.

Once again, perfect weather for the evening.  I love June.

The Three Amigas:  Abby, Sophie, and Ella.

The Tribe

Moms, cluckin' about stuff

Kris' Uncle Wayne gifted us this old whiskey barrel when he picked us up from Florida - he knows a guy who gets them all the time, so he said he'd be able to hook us up with more in the future.  Kris wanted to refinish it and then cut it in half in order to turn into tables or flower pots or some shit.  I would rather keep it as after touching it up a bit, using it as a standing table of some kind in the basement, but we'll see who wins out in the end.  For now - and probably for the unforeseeable future - it's hanging out, untouched, in the garage.

The third week of the month me and the girls drove up to Clare for my nephew Blake's high school open house (Kris had Covid again so she wasn't able to attend.)

They had ordered a food truck, which was pretty awesome (burgers, sandwiches, stuff like that) - I might end up going that route for when our own girls graduate high school.

We didn't stick around too long - long enough for the kids to eat and drink a few pops - aside from my folks and sister's fam we didn't really know anyone, so we gave Blake $100 cash (because I forgot to get a card) and headed back to Midland.

So Alayna and a bunch of her friends have decided that they're 'getting in shape' this summer (we'll see how long that lasts.)  I figured I'd humor her for as long as it lasts, and showed her how to use the treadmill in our den.

Believe it or not - and I can't believe this myself, honestly - she did three days in a row towards the end of the month logging two hours (at a fast walk) each day.  Since she's watching Tik-Tok videos on Youtube, I'm assuming her short-attention span prevented her from realizing she was even exercising at all.  We'll see how long this lasts.

In a very, very rare form of sisters getting along, here we have the Cannonball helping Abby do her nails.  This happens, like, once or twice a year.  If that.  Hence snapping a picture of it.

Abby finally got braces towards the end of the month, which was quite the big deal for her. Not that she needed as much work done as Alayna, though - Alayna needed way more work done in order to give her half-way normal set of chompers back in the day (she looked like Snaggletooth for a couple years there.)

And, in closing, here's a picture of Alayna and her friend, Ava, sitting in the back of some kinda truck.  I have no idea what this is or where it is, but Kris took this picture. . . I'm including it because it happened in the month of June.  So you're welcome.

- Brian

Back to the Tropics, Day IX

  (contd.)

Day IX

There and Back Again

 

One, last sunrise over the pool (and lake. . . but who honestly gives a shit about the lake at this point in time.)

We started organizing our luggage the night before - doing multiple loads of laundry, wrapping the more fragile souvenirs (like Abby's manta statue from Discovery Cove, my Vader bust, etc.) in laundry and packing them in my carry-on, crap like that - and spent most of the morning doing walk-throughs of the condo, making sure we weren't leaving anything behind (mission accomplished there.)

We were lucky enough to have an afternoon flight back to Detroit, so we were able to sleep in a bit this morning.  We Houghs are a lazy lot, and we were 100% cool with the way this worked out.

By about 10am we were out of the condo for the last time and ready to get the hell out of dodge. . .

After going through the whole drop-off procedures for the Turo car - which took us a little more time than we thought it would (Kris had somewhat of a learning curve with the whole process, we'll just leave it at that) - we took a roundabout way to the Delta terminal to check in for our flight (we had to drop off the car in Terminal A, but our flight was departing from the usual Terminal B - total pain in the ass.)

Patiently waiting for her mom to check her flight information.

Arriving in Terminal B, an hour behind schedule. . .

Kris checks in our three suitcases - no issues whatsoever with this part.

Here's where things get f***y.  We arrived in front of the TSA Security Check Point with an hour and a half to spare before our flight departed - more than enough time one would think to get to our departure gate, right?  Well, we had breezed through the Detroit Metro Airport TSA in less than 10 minutes, surely the Orlando airport would be just as efficient, right?  Well, we felt like we had plenty of time to check out the last-minute Disney, Universal, and Sea World gift shops before going through the TSA line.  So much so, in fact, that we spent about 30 minutes perusing the stores before finally getting in line.

This was, hands-down, the single dumbest thing we did all vacation.  We failed to factor in the fact that, unlike the Detroit airport, Orlando's airport has a much higher volume of international travelers (due to Orlando's huge tourism industry) and, as such, the security lines would move much, MUCH slower.  We were stuck behind a group of about a dozen (what I can only assume were) Mongols, and no one knew what the hell they were doing or going.  The TSA team was horribly under-staffed, and they only had one detector operating.  As such, as we slowly - ever-so-slowly - progressing through the line, watching the time fly by.  Pretty soon we realized - to our horror - that we only had twenty minutes to get to our flight before departure.

We finally cleared security with a mere ten minutes to spare.  We had to run to the tram station, but were lucky enough to run straight on to a tram (no waiting involved, thank God.)

Severe panic was setting in by this point - we only had a handful of minutes to spring from the tram to our departure gate, as our flight was wrapping up boarding by this point in time and preparing to take off.  If you've ever seen the Home Alone movies - where an entire family takes off at a dead sprint through the airport, screaming at each other the whole way towards their gate, that was the Houghs this afternoon.  Definitely not our finest moment as a family, but not our worst either.

We were the LAST people onto the plane, and we got there just as they were announcing our name throughout the Delta gates.  The attendants were shaking their head as we hastily handed over our boarding passes and took off down the ramp towards the plane.  The looks we got from the passengers (especially in First Class) already seated in the plane said it all:  this family is a hot f***ing mess.  But we made it, and we managed to fly all the way back to Michigan without incident.  Kris' Uncle Wayne picked us up in Kris' van, and we made eventually drove it all the way back home to Midland without any other hiccups.  Kind of a stressful, panicky ending to an otherwise perfect trip, but I suppose you can't have a true adventure without some sort of inconvenience rightly considered.  All things told, this was one hell of a vacation, and we're definitely looking forward to the next one.  And there WILL be a next one - after all, we're part-Floridians, and the theme parks of Central Florida feel just as 'home' as Central Michigan.  Until next time, America.

- FIN - 

- Brian