StressBash '22

Hey gang.

God, I hate September.  If August is truly the Sunday of the Summer, than it should go without saying that this butthole of a month is the Monday of the calendar year, folks.  And I'll fight you if you disagree with me.

Sure, maybe that's just for kids and us folks in the education field, but still.

I inherited this horse skull for my classroom this year.  Pretty rad.

This September was fairly busy, seeing how Alayna's involvement in school now that she's a Freshman is considerably higher.  Between her drama engagements (she's a stagehand again this year, along with several of her close friends) and Abby's pom practices and performances, our weekdays were filled with shuttling kids back and forth between various schools and performance centers.  Our social calendar took a big hit this month, as all of our friends' families equally took a hit this month with Back to School nonsense.  As such, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot to document this month, and, as such, this month's post is pretty sparse.

But here's some weird shit for you guys to check out anyway. . .

Kris and her coworker, Nicole, along with their kids. . . somewhere.  I forget where this was and what they were doing, because I was not involved.  But here you go anyway.

Kris' church - First United Methodist, downtown - held their annual Fall Kickoff for families towards the beginning of the month, with a bounce house and a ton of other such carnival attractions for kids. . . but then it decided to rain (again) and everyone was forced indoors.  As such, the turnout was dramatically lower than anticipated.

Abby and Gabby square off in whatever the hell these things are.

First fall beer of the season.  It was decent, but I wouldn't go out of my way to order it again.  I'm kinda 'meh' when it comes to most German-style beers.

Both girls are pretty heavily involved in orchestra these days, and have improved quite a bit over the years.  These evening practices are like mini-concerts now.

Abby and Ella - and some other random kid - take a selfie during one of Northeast's first home football games.  As always, the pom team performs their routine during the games' half-times.

Our buddy Mitch recently put in a backyard swimming pool, and had his whole backyard renovated.  He bought some pre-fab gazebo thing from Costco, and needed a whole team of strong dads to assemble.  Enter the Fighting Hellfish. . .

This was fairly simple to put together, it just required a lot of hands on deck to do so - not sure how someone could have managed it with only two or three guys.  It was definitely a multi-day job.

For every guy working, you need at least two standing around with a beer telling others what they should be doing.  That's how dads do construction, folks.

Mitch photobombs once again. . .

The moms came out to 'help', too - thank God they were all there. . .

My brother recently returned home to Midland, buying a house up by the Chippewa Nature Center.  We had planned a Saturday evening hangout over at their place one weekend, but Nora decided to puke up all over the place and they sent us this pic to see if we were still comfortable coming over if someone in the house was sick.  At the time we were like 'screw it,' it's fine, but probably should have passed in hindsight - Chris and I would later both catch whatever it was Nora had, and I'd end up taking a day and a half off of work for it.  Not fun.

Later that morning, I returned to the Bos residence where Tom and I helped Mitch construct the roof panels for his gazebo.  It was slow, tedious work assembling the panels - way more confusing than the initial framing had been.

Mitch consults the Holy Instruction Manual. . .

I had to leave in the early evening so Kris and I could head out to my brother's place for our scheduled hangout, but we had managed to assemble all four panels.

In-laws

As much as I like to give my kids shit for things, they're both ridiculously intelligent (that's from my genes, mind you, not the Farwell side of their make-up.)  Alayna's NWEA scores for ELA and Math are off the charts.

Kris accompanied Alayna to Midland High one evening for a parent/student drama event where the crew assembled props and stage crap for an upcoming play based on The Outsiders.  Here Alayna spray paints some barrel for a scene. . . I guess. 

She also decided to spray paint the soles of her shoes.  'Cause why not.

Abby's old glasses broke multiple times - because we were idiots and allowed her to get wire frames, as that's what she wanted at the time - so this time when it came time to get new glasses, we made sure she got some sturdy-ass frames.

One Friday, before I got home from work, Kris got up on the roof of the house in order to use a foam sealer around the chimney in order to prevent a minor drip from continuing.  Abby, of course, wanted to join her (you definitely won't catch me up there, that's for damn sure.)

Mitch and Kelli had wanted to have their pool up and running at the beginning of the summer so that the friend group could utilize it for months.  Multiple pool parties, grill outs, etc.  Unfortunately, due to labor and supply shortages - and many, many delays - it wasn't until late August that the pool was finally finished, and by then the weather was starting too cool off.  Mitch had tried to plan at least one pool party towards the beginning of the month, but in the days leading up to it the temperature plummeted, and that idea was sadly nixed.  Instead, we just had our usual meat fest with multiple dead animals charring up on various grills and smokers. There was also sushi on hand, which is always appreciated by this group.

Omkar and Mitch hanging out by the grills under the recently-completed gazebo.

A bunch of dead animals.

This is a pretty good cider, right here.  Fall is definitely cider weather.

Abby and I went out to the local Halloween store (which opened up in the old Yonkers area of the Midland Mall) in order to give Abby some costume ideas, but the store sucked and they didn't have much (the Spirit store in Saginaw is definitely better.)  While we were there, however, we did find some sword/shield combos for Chris' twins, Louis and Sam, who are going as knights this Halloween.  So the trip wasn't a total loss.

Kris has been working on sanding down and removing rust from the whiskey barrel that we got from her Uncle Wayne upon returning from Florida back in June. It's one hell of a process, but it'll look pretty awesome once it's completed.

We had asked the girls to empty the dishwasher and put the dirty dishes from the sink into the dishwasher one afternoon after school, when Kris and I would be coming home later in the evening.  Instead, the girls continued to pile up dirty dishes in the sink, and this is what we came home to.  Teenagers suck.

I made this chicken pot pie all by myself, believe it or not.  But it ended up being more like chicken soup with a crust.  Still, it was edible.

At a recent Fellowcraft degree put on by our lodge's Past Masters.  A rare look inside a Masonic meeting (I figured I could share this because our Worshipful Master - the guy who runs our lodge for a year-long term - already did on Facebook.)

One Friday, towards the end of the month, I met Kris and Abby over at the Spirit Halloween store (this year it was over in the mall) in Saginaw.  This is by far the best Halloween store in the area, and we bought multiple new home decorations and a few costume pieces while we were there, including this cavalier hat for my upcoming costume (which you'll see pics of in a future post.)  See ya next month, Internet. . .

- Brian