Hoco '25, Pt. II

 (contd.)

Most of this morning and early afternoon was spent with Kris and I helping our kids stay on schedule throughout their 'getting ready' process. Alayna and her group were pretty on top of things (no surprises there, Alayna's been making her own checklists since she was like seven years old - the Hough genes are strong in her), but Abby and her group were a hot mess and needed a lot of additional support. Eventually, Kris got Abby out the door and over to Juliana's house to finish getting ready with her group (pictured here.) Juliana's Mom had a pretty cute setup for the kids all prepared, and by the looks of things they ended up stumbling over the finish line just in time.

Abby made one of these TikTok time-lapse videos while she was getting ready. 'Cause teenagers.

While Abby and her group were wrapping up getting ready, Alayna and Sebastian met up with Kris and I at Dow Gardens around 3pm. Lexi and Kyle were already there, having gone further into the gardens in order to get some of their couple pics out of the way before the rest of their groups showed up, so after paying our way through the Visitor Center, we headed in to meet up with them. Along the way, we had the two kids sit on a bench so they could affix their corsages and. . . whatever the male equivalent to that is.

Alayna fortunately didn't stab the poor guy in the process - I was waiting for that.

They themed their outfits this year, as you can tell from the shoes and custom laces, etc.

Lexi and Kyle came and found us as we were wrapping up the corsage pics. Sebastian's showing off his fancy footwear in this pic.

Kyle and Sebastian.

Alayna and Lexi's respective corsages.

Starting off on our loop of photo ops through Dow Gardens (we'd do three, different loops during our THREE HOURS at this place, stopping off at most of the exact, same locations for nearly identical pictures - you'll soon spot the similarities in a lot of these pics.)

Nabbed a few couple pics while waiting for other folks to get their pics taken in front of the waterfall.

Not the best lighting obviously - it was dark in the shade, and with the kids' clothes being black the camera over-compensated and whited out Alayna's face into oblivion.

The boys were a big fan of this photo op at prom - where they pretended to piss into this little stream - so they asked to do it again. Happy to oblige.

Getting a group pic under the ol' wooden archway (which you've seen a billion times before.)

Now just a couple one.

We didn't realize it at the time, but we failed to get a solo pic of Alayna today - like, at any point. Not one. Not sure how we dropped the ball there.

Alayna had a pair of flip flops to wear around between photo ops today 'cause walking in her four-inch heels was just about impossible. After having to wait around for her to change her shoes a few times between stops, Sebastian said 'screw it' and just started carrying her from place to place.

That's chivalry, gang.

Alayna had texted Lexi this earlier in the day. . .

. . . .and she got her wish.

Those are some big boys, too - those girls' legs had to have been hurting.

Alayna and Lexi

They wanted to lie down on this hill for this pose, so I told them to do so carefully as to not grass-stain up their dresses.

And another one with the boys.

Kyle and Lexi

As we were wrapping up with Alayna and her group, Abby and her sophomore crew had just rolled in. We were close to the Visitor Center (that you pass through to enter the Gardens), so we just met up with them there. I nabbed a couple pics of our girls with our basically third daughter.

Whenever other kids would pass by, they'd ask to take pics with our girls. I have no idea who this kid is.

. . . or this kid.

Alayna, Lexi, Bree (at far left), and four girls who my kid doesn't hang out with at all.

Starting our second loop around Dow Gardens, back at the waterfall for even more pictures of girls in dresses in front of waterfalls. Abby, Ella and Harper.

Now here's a bunch of pics of just Abby standing in front of the waterfall. . .

And some with Ella. . .

And one with Juliana. I know there's a bunch of pics in this post, but I'm only sharing like half of what I ended up keeping from the approx. 700 pics I originally took. I think I ended up with like 160 of whittled down and touched up pics, but that's a LOT for a blog post, folks.

Alayna and Sebastian followed us around for a bit, and I took a couple more of them, but since Lexi and Kyle had taken off already and we had already covered Alayna pretty well throughout the previous hour, my focus was now on Abby and her crew.

Abby, Ella, and some girl that was in their Homecoming group this year (kind of a 'friend of a friend' or 'acquaintance' sorta thing.)

The whole crew assembled (minus Kiersten, who didn't end up coming out to Dow Gardens for some reason.)

Saw this dude chowing down on a nut in the bushes at one point. Couldn't have cared less that there were hundreds of loud-ass people roaming about his backyard.

Abby, Ella and Harper, recreating one of their classic, go-to poses.

And there's this one, which hurts my back just to look at.

Sebastian and Alayna take off for their dinner reservation with the rest of their group.

Just before they took off I attempted to get a sister pic, but again, the lighting wasn't ideal today.

Another kid passing by requested a pic with Abby. Again, no idea who this kid is.

The girls wanted to try and get a picture of their group walking hand-in-hand through this gauntlet of flowers. We first tried getting them walking away from me and looking back, but out of the 40 or so pictures I shot off in rapid succession, this was the only one worth keeping.

So we attempted having them walk towards me instead. . .

. . . also kind of a trainwreck, if we're being honest.

Back at the wooden archway, getting some solo shots of that frickin' Johnson kid. . .

And now some with Abzilla. . .

The girls also wanted to recreate some of their white fence pics from last year. This shouldn't have been as difficult as it was to stage five girls along a white fence, but. . . it was.

Lighting was pretty good here (it was super bright out, and 90 degrees to boot, so kids ended up either whited-out or cool-washed by the shade. Not ideal by any means, but it was decent here.

Left to Right: Juliana, Abby, Harper, Ella, aaaaand some other kid.

95% of today's time spent in Dow Gardens looked like this. This is what in-between shots looked like.

Touching up one another's make-up. Again.

At one point, while a couple, nearby groups of girls were getting all these artsy, cute pics taken around these flower gardens by their parents, Erik (who was also there) and I looked around for our girls in order to get something similar. Couldn't find them 'cause they had wandered out of view, and then we ultimately found them down by a dirty pond, with one of their friends taking a picture of them doing this. . .

Seriously with these two - they have not changed since they were five years old, doing crap like this.

Back to the fence for a few more shots. . .

Abby and one of the Homecoming big-wigs (didn't get her name.)

Abby and Riley (from her pom team.)

Abby's group splintered off and headed back to the main entrance in order to hit their dinner reservation (I forget where the rest of those girls were eating), and just as that was happening Abby's boyfriend, Kingston, had rolled in with his group of friends. So, for the third time that afternoon, it was back to the Visitor Center to start a THIRD lap of Dow Gardens. . .

We had them exchange their flower-thingies before we kicked off with their little photo shoot. To no one's surprise (at all), Abby struggled with it a lot more than Alayna did. . .

Kingston's mom snapped a few pics on her phone as well.

Back in the parking lot, Alayna got a couple quick pics with Cristina and Rita before heading off to dinner.

Sebastian found a stray cat in the parking lot and was able to scoop it up. I don't think he kept it, though.

Kris catches up to our group after running Alayna's spare shoes out to her in the parking lot. That face says it all.

Kris snapped this one with her phone in this little clearing because last year one of her favorites of Alayna and Sebastian was taken right here (the lighting was better last year, though.)

Abby, Kingston, and two other kids whom I don't know at all.

(I'm assuming it's one of Kingston's hockey teammates.)

Following the sidewalk around the bend from the waterfall, they next wanted a pic on this random memorial bench (see plaque - bunch of old, dead ladies.)

Kingston's little brother jumped in for one. Why not.

Posing in front of the little stream that Kyle and Sebastian were 'peeing' into earlier. Hours ago.

Back at the wooden arch.

Then back to this bench, beyond the arch. Seriously just doing all the same shots, over and over and over again.

Ran into Dave McPeak at one point, who was there taking pics of his two girls as well. Also ran into Lonnie and Brandon, and Rob was apparently there as well but I didn't see him. Definitely the place to be today.

Abby randomly bumped into her pom teammate, Brooklyn, so we had to get one of them obviously (you can see the sheer number of people roaming about the Gardens this afternoon - at this point I stopped trying to get shots without people in the background, I was funned out.)

Kris got a pic of Abby and Kingston with Alivia (Lonnie and Stephanie's oldest) with her long-term boyfriend, Jackson - Brandon's oldest.)

Back at the hills that we took those pics of Alayna and her group lying down in the grass, Kris wanted some pics of them just walking around. . . for some reason.

You can tell Abby was loving this.

Then the 'candid' ones of the them walking back towards us.

Abby and some kid she knows (again, no idea who this is.) This was the last one we got at the Gardens, as we were heading back towards the Visitor Center. After three hours of picture-taking, we were finally done.

Abby and Kingston, on the way to their dinner (forgot where they ended up going.)

While our kids were off to dinner, Kris and I headed over to my brother Chris' house to have a few drinks and some food with him and Nicole and my brother Jeff (sans Carissa, who was taking care of Kinsley, who was sick - Annie had the other three this weekend.) Chris was also without kids, as Mom was nice enough to watch them for the night. We ended up hanging out over there until about 10pm or so before we came home in time to intercept the kids all coming home after the dance (Alayna had like six or seven friends over for a post-Hoco hangout in our basement, so we wanted to make sure adults were home for that.) This barbecue sauce was awesome - gonna have to pick some of it up for our next party for sure.

Sebastian and Alayna, en route to their dinner reservation at Midland Brewing Company.

Originally her group - spearheaded by her and Cristina, who are the big planners among their group of friends - had landed on The Boulevard for dinner, which would've been great, and they even had reservations for that place. Then a couple of the kids in the group expressed reservations about having their Homecoming Dinner at a bar. . . so they pivoted and ended up at a brewery instead. Because that makes sense.

That being said, the brewery is a little bit fancier, so who knows.

A couple hours later, arriving at the school with Lexi.

Abby and some other, random kid outside the Dance.

Birkenstocks are all the rage these days. No idea why.

Abby, Ella, Juliana and a couple other girls get a group pic at the dance.

For Abby's group, the After Party took the form of a sleepover back at Juliana's house. 

Some weird shot of Abby and Ella and Nica - not sure of the context here - but this was the last pic of the night on Abby's camera roll. Thus concludes this year's Homecoming, folks. . . hope you enjoyed the mound of pictures, I'm sure next year there will be even more. Maybe I'll get to hang out at Dow Gardens for four hours, that would be pretty rad.

- Brian