February: More or Less Spring

The Hough Family snowmen are in pretty rough shape these days.

Welcome back, readers.

I know it's El Nino and everything this year, and I've heard of this 'Global Warming' thingy that's been going around lately, but holy motherf***ing God was it ever warm this month. This may very well go down as the warmest winter month I've ever experienced.

75 degrees on a random weekday evening?  In February?!

We're all going to die.  Sooner rather than later.

Anyway, this was kind of a blah month for us around these parts - after the last few months of chaos (October - January, basically), this month the brakes finally kicked in and we stopped being so frickin' busy every weekend. The only thing really that we had going on was a few pom and orchestra obligations with the kids, sprinkled about here and there, so that our weekends were pretty wide-open to sit around and do jack shit, and our weekdays were just the usual back-to-normal grind (pom practice for Abby, Honors orchestra practices for Alayna, Bachelor Nights with the wives for Kris on Tuesdays, and few nights at the Gym for Yours Truly (I don't like going on and having beers with the guys on school nights, so I usually skip those.)

So yeah, not a whole hell of a lot to show off this time around, but here's some of the usual pics and video you've all come to expect from these monthly installments of ours.

Enjoy. . . 

Splurged a little this month and picked up a bottle of my all-time favorite bourbon (that I discovered down in Kentucky this summer whilst on Brocation.)

I got super bored at work one day and decided to create a flow-chart of Classic Rock to help those students of mine who have, in the past, expressed interest in older music, get acquainted with new bands. I reached out to Dad to better categorize a few parts, and fill in some gaps, but the end result turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. Kinda wanna try doing one of these with Punk Rock next.

Courtesy of Alayna's phone, here's a video of Samson licking peanut butter off a spoon. This is the sort of day-to-day crap that my kids choose to document.

Prior to their performance at Solo and Ensemble earlier in the month, Alayna and her friend Lexi hit up multiple stores attempting to find matching outfits.

Umm. . . the snowmen?  This month has been ridiculously warm, guys.

Following our crazy-ass ice storm we had last month, this poor pine tree in our back garden lost a big chunk out of it's side. Kris reached out to our gardener, who insists that this will eventually fill back in (after a few years.) I have my doubts.

Alayna hates going to the church youth group's weekly meetings (Abby loves 'em, but she's younger and not as full of all that shitty, teen angst as her sister.) The youth group director - who's really great with kids, both the girls like her - found Alayna a job at the meetings to keep her involved and occupied: preparing food and snacks for the other kids. This has been going on a for a couple months now, and Alayna is really enjoying it.

Oh look. More dog videos.  Guess who's phone this was?

The Cannonball, hilt-deep in another one of her usual, hours-long homework sessions.

Bunch of Northeast Orchestra kids - featuring Abby and Ella in the front - hanging out. . . somewhere.

Abby and the Pom squad, I assume at practice (though this doesn't look like Northeast's gym - not sure where this is, either.)

While Alayna's phone is filled up with dog pics, Abby's camera roll looks more like this.

Dinner. Why Alayna took this, who knows.

Nothing suspicious going on here at all. . .

Towards the middle of the month, Abby and the orchestra hosted some random conductor for an evening performance at Central Auditorium. I forget the specifics of this, but I think he was invited to the school, and over the course of a couple hours (or something) he taught them a couple songs, then they performed them all later that evening in front of an audience. It feels like this kinda stuff happens all the time around here. . .

As they say, there's always room for cello. . .

The guys all went out for beers one Thursday (Thursday being the day of the week that they usually go out and grab beers), and were giving me shit for bowing out once again (I don't go out on school nights as a general rule.) I told them I was at the gym and Mitch demanded proof, so I sent him this sweaty pic of me in a weighted vest.

I was driving between Freeland and Saginaw one morning, on my way to work, when I noticed the clouds were super low in the sky, and kinda resembled a distant mountain range. Haven't seen that yet, so I had to break the law and take a quick pic of it.

Northeast Pom, once again. Now that I think of it, maybe this is at the Midland Community Center . . . that would make sense.

One day while I was at home on a day off and the girls were away at school, Abby asked me to take pictures of certain food items at home for a presentation she was putting together in Spanish class. She asked for a pic of milk and I sent her this.

Lent started this month (I'm told, I'm not a child-molesting Catholic), and one of Kris' churches (not sure which one, she has two) was doing some Fat Tuesday thingy with a carnival vibe. Food, games, etc. They had a photo booth, so of course my roommates posed for it.

(I have no idea who this frickin' kid is.)

While they were doing that, I was across town at Lodge for my monthly Knight Commandery meeting. You've probably seen Knight Templars in parades, they're the dudes where plumed hats and carrying swords. We have a small collection of swords, probably 50-60, dating back over a hundred years in varying conditions. One of the other guys in our conclave matched a bunch of the swords and scabbards up and put aside the nicer twenty or so for us to 'drill' with (swords are used in the rituals and ceremonies, which is pretty cool.)

I've been using this one, which used to belong to a Norris R. Wentworth. I Googled the name and it turns out it was some lumber baron from Bay City who was a Freemason back in the 1910s/20s. 

Newer Masonic swords don't look nearly as cool as these old-school ones. This one I've been using dates back to the 1920s.

Abby, Ella, and a few other girls from the Northeast team participated in a 'pom clinic' one Thursday after school for a couple hours. The Midland High School team teaches everyone in attendance (all ages welcome I think) a super-simple pom routine (easy enough for the little-ass kids to memorize quickly.)

So like sixty-some kids, ranging from toddlers to girls on the Varsity Pom Team, came out at Half Time during a basketball game and put on this routine for the assembled masses. Abby, Ella, and a couple of the other middle schoolers were front and center, which was cool for us parents in terms of picture-taking.

Here - check out a bunch of pom pics. . .

Afterwards, Abby and Ella were able to meet up with a few of the older girls that used to be on the Northeast team before moving on to the high school.

Obligatory social media post commemorating the event.

That Friday, Kris and I went out for a date (sans kids) to Whichcraft (one of my personal favorite joints in town - they have the best selection of craft beers around.) While there, I went with one of my tried-and-true favorite beers (if not my all-time favorite), Founders Breakfast Stout. It's like Heaven in a snifter.

Late that weekend, the Houghs tried out hand at making the Upper Peninsula staple, pasties. We'd only had them once before, but they were super good - figured we'd give it a whirl.

So they turned out. . . okay. The filling was super good, but we made the crust too thick - way too much crust. Like it was hard to finish one of these, which made it great for leftovers since they lasted nearly a week, but it sucks being over-stuffed. Next time we'll tweak the recipe a smidge.

Abby and the 8th Grade Orchestra performed a winter concert the following week, just a simple preview for their upcoming, annual Festival showcase (so I opted not to video it this time around - I'll share the legit Festival performance next month in a post.)

I attempted to buy a Pennywise hat this month, found it on eBay and figured I'd boost my punk rock credentials a bit. Unfortunately the famous log was off-center and my OCD wouldn't settle for the imperfection, so I sent it back. Gonna have to keep my eye out for another hat now. Oh well.

Hanging out down in the Captain's Quarters with my roommates one Saturday afternoon, towards the end of the month. I was playing through Skyrim on the Nintendo Switch and Alayna was playing the early-80s Breakout system.

This doofus hung out with us for a bit, too.

Back upstairs, getting ready to settle in for an evening movie.

Made myself an Old Fashioned with some Elijah Craig I had lying around. Such a great drink.

The weather this weekend was absolutely gorgeous - low 70s and sunny - so Kris wanted to spend as much time outside as possible working in the yard. Samson kept Kris while she worked outside on our poor, beat-up pine tree (breaking out the saw my folks got her for Christmas.)

Kris' van had been making a clicking noise the last few weeks, so we took it in to Midland Ford - where we bought it, like, four years ago - and they took a look at it. They estimated it would cost something like $5000 to fix, and offered to buy it back at salvage, seeing how it was in rough shape. This was obviously horrible news, especially seeing how we had just bought a new car, like, a week or two before - the idea of purchasing two cars in one month was nerve-wracking. We called around to a couple different places and most folks quoted us around the same, so things weren't looking good at all.

After a couple super shitty weeks, my mom told Kris about this mechanic in town that she takes her vehicles to. Kris brought the van in and we were given surprisingly good news: all that needed to be fixed was this one, small part (which cost, like $20.) Most folks had assumed, while listening to the tick, that it was a more common, more expensive problem, but this old good ol' boy that runs the shop was able to get to the problem and take care of it for a measly $600. So now Kris is going to hold on to her van (which is running perfectly again, by the way) for another five or six years. And we got a new go-to mechanic out of the deal. Talk about a stroke of good fortune.

That weekend, the girls were craving meat pies again, but none of us were feeling up for more crust-heavy pasties. I found an empanada recipe instead that called for smaller pies with thinner crusts, so we went with that route instead. Kris and I made an assembly line out of the affair, with Yours Truly rolling out flattened shells and Kris filling them and pinching them shut.

This meal turned out far better than our pasties, but was way too labor-intensive to turn into a regular meal option. From starting the filling, mixing up the shells, assembling the pies, and baking several batches, it ended up taking three or four hours. We're not those kinds of foodies, guys.

The last night of the month, Alayna registered for next year's college courses. She's enrolling in Midland High School's College Program - a partnership between Midland Schools and nearby community colleges (like Delta.) Basically Alayna will take some college classes the last couple years of high school, and will attend a 'fifth' year of high school where she'll only take college classes (though she'll still walk in her graduation at the end of her senior year.) At the completion of her fifth year of high school, she'll officially graduate with a legit Associates Degree. . . FOR FREE. Wish this had been an option of me when I was her age. Then again, the dorms were pretty f***ing fun.

- Brian