The Big Man. And a Train.

Santa's crib.  Coincidentally located in the heart of downtown Midland.

Hi gang.

The Holidays are officially upon us, and although we're already two weeks into the 2015 holiday season, we're just now getting around to taking the kids to see Mr. Claus.

Kinda slacking this year.

Anyway, despite going to Bronner's two weeks ago, we opted to skip their Santa for the one in downtown Midland, as the latter has his own cobblestone house, a train, a toy shop, fewer crowds, is free, and is conveniently located five minutes from our house.

Santa arrives at his chateau. . .

Definitely a no-brainer there.

We got down there about ten minutes before the Big Man showed up to his house, so we were about twelve kids back in the line (a smart move on our part, as right around the time he got there the line was snaking all around the house.)  Afterwards we were lucky enough to walk right onto the train that ran every half hour around the downtown area.  All in all, a pretty easy Sunday outing.

Anyway, check out this year's pics from our visit with Kris Kringle. . .

The girls begin to shit their pants as Santa strolls up.   As he briefly addressed the outside line of kids and parents, he singled out Alayna and made some quip about not recognizing her on account of her missing tooth, which totally made her day.

Here's our kids in front of a giant, frickin' snowman.

(Not really the North Pole.)

The Cannonball's new favorite pose.

Abby.  Bein' weird.

No idea why Abby's so depressed here.  She's a bizarre child.

This branch of pine bought us a few minutes in line with the kids.  Whatever works.

Checking out the window displays in line. . .

Next in the queue, awaiting our turn outside an ominous red door. 

Checking out the window displays while waiting in line (this time inside, where it's warm and not-windy.)

Lots of crap to look at in Santa's crib.

Hey look, it's us.  In a sleigh.  Indoors.

Kris tries to keep the kids in line (literally), while Abby checks a Polar Bears incisors. 

She really wanted to hang out with these guys.

Abby stood in front of this clock going 'TICK, TOCK, TICK, TOCK' for about five minutes.  It bordered on creepy.

Lots of Christmas crap, lots of adults, lots of SLRs.

More of Santa's interior decorating.

You can barely see it, but at one point they actually released a shower of fake snow. . . much like they used to do down Celebration, FL.

Why do kids love this shit so much?

Behold. . . Santa's hearth.  I guess.

This Santa's pretty cool - he really takes his time with kids.  Each of our girls probably had two minutes with him, which, while it might not sound like a long time, kinda is. . . especially considering the huge line waiting both outside and snaking around inside his 'workshop.'

Alayna asked for 'Shopkins' this year (which are, honestly, the stupidest toy I've ever heard of), but Santa pressed her for more.  She couldn't really think of anything else on the spot, so he asked if it would be okay to surprise her a little on Christmas morning with some other things as well.  And of course she was cool with this.

Abby, probably for the first time in her life, wasn't apprehensive at all about sitting with Santa. . . thank God.  Even once she got past that little kid crying phase, she still wasn't fond of sitting on some random old dude's lap.

Abby asked for Star Wars toys from us, but she had specific items she wanted from Santa Claus this year:  Darth Vader pajamas and Darth Vader slippers.  This was awesome for us, 'cause we already bought her the exact things she was asking for.  It's always a moment of terror, awaiting whatever the hell pops out of your kids' mouths while they're visiting with Santa:  I'm always afraid they're going to ask for something completely random, or really expensive, forcing Kris and I to scramble like idiots at the last second.  Looks like we dodged the bullet again this year. 

The kids received a special ornament from Santa for our upstairs and downstairs Christmas trees this year, along with candy and a calendar. . . so needless to say they were pretty thrilled with things.

The courthouse in downtown Midland.

The Cannonball.  Being the Cannonball.

(She's singing.)

Not sure if they were allowed to manhandle the camels, but we let them anyway. . .

The kids wanted to go pick up Baby Jesus, so we had to yell at them.  You know, the usual.

As we were walking back to the car, an elderly chap came up to us and gave us four tickets for Santa's train ride.  We had anticipated a half-hour wait when we saw the train earlier, as that's what most other people were saying it was, but after we were given tickets we found ourselves at the front of the line, and on the train itself about five minutes later.  Can't complain with that at all.

NOT digging the camera in her face.

Hooray for trains.  This ride would prove to be a decent break from the cold air, for sure; the train drove about eight blocks around the downtown area, starting at the courthouse and driving all the way down to the Loons Stadium before heading east for a block, backtracking for a few blocks more north, then turning back towards the courthouse.  Pretty smooth ride, and it was HEATED.  Hell yeah.

Eating candy on a train.  Abby's in Heaven.

Disembarking at the end of our ride (which probably lasted about ten - fifteen minutes.)

Yet another awkward Hough family photograph. 

Skipping back to the van.

- Brian

September Randomness

Hi gang.

Here we are again at the end of another month.  This month saw quite a few changes come about - Kris and I returned to the work force, the girls started school, and the trees started flaking their dandruff all over our lawn.  September was a whirlwind (unlike boring ol' August, if you'll remember), so we'll leave you now with a sampling of randomness from the last thirty days.

Enjoy.

This is what I've been reading for the last two weeks.  Being an avid fan of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit books, and having sampled other tales (like the Silmarillion and sagas of Hurin, etc.), this was a pretty cool read.  Not the easiest read, but a good once-and-awhile book to have on hand during one's afternoon pipe session.

A generational portrait with Mom's side of the family.

Grandma Chinery and our niece, Scarlett (Jeff and Annie's oldest)

Kris took the girls to check out the local dinosaur exhibit and the Midland Center for the Arts one day.  Neither kid is really all that into dinosaurs, but they had a good time checking everything out. . .

. . . as you can see, here.

No, our basement isn't being overrun with trees.  We took the six or seven fake trees from my old classroom and created a wall of foliage to separate 'my' side of the basement from the girls' side.

You can't really tell from this picture, on account of the low light, but I pulled out a bunch of my creepy Halloween decorations and lights to set the appropriate atmosphere for a game night Chris and I have been planning for a few weeks now. . .

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Nightmare - a classic, campy horror game from the early 1990s that we used to play at Mom's house growing up.  We decided to play this, over cocktails, when Nicole (Chris' girlfriend) was in town, so she and Kris could experience this game in all its campy gloriousness.

The novelty of this game is that you play a VHS tape when you begin the game, and randomly throughout the game this creepy dude called the Gatekeeper pops up on the screen to yell at you and tell different players to do different things.  It's comically awful.

Hilarity ensues.  I don't think anyone collected the six keys necessary to win the game. . . which means the creepy VHS guy won.  Go figure.

A couple weeks later, there was an ice cream social at the girls' school in the evening.  So, since we didn't have anything else going on, we swung by to check it out. . .

Abby always manages to eat her ice cream in a manner of minutes, while Alayna takes forever to eat half of hers while Abby sits there impatiently.  Then, Alayna declares she no longer wants any, at which point Abby volunteers to finish off her sister's ice cream.  They have a system.

. . . aaaaand this pretty much sums it up.

Voguing at the ice cream social.  They had a few 'activities' for the kids set up around the place, but our kids just wanted to screw around in the costume bin. . . not surprisingly.

Heading out.

Emulating Princess Leia - her favorite Star Wars character.

Baking muffins with mom.

Chestnut Hill's 2015 Balloon Racing Team.  They have to circumvent the globe in 80 days in order to receive a passing grade.  Stupid Common Core. . .

Alayna's 2nd grade class (not sure which one's Alayna.)

We have a really, really lazy dog.  A good fit for this family.

I appreciate my wife.  Just not when it comes to helping me out with yard work.

Abby sometimes demands her picture taken.  We oblige.

We picked up Abby's Halloween costume for this year, via Amazon - Princess Leia from A New Hope.  Better quality than I expected, but I think we're going to need Mom to hem it up a little bit on the bottom so Abby doesn't trip all over it.  And I don't think that wig is going to make it.

Abby wanted a picture taken with some of her artwork that she did for her friends at school.

The kids were super excited to try out some of their new jackets they've acquired since moving back up here to Michigan.  We had bought them super pretty fancy Colombia jackets for the hardcore winter times, and have since then amassed a collection of cool fall, cold fall, warm winter, cold winter, and everything-in-between jackets and coats.  From us, from Mom, from our friends who have kids, you name it.  Pretty cool for the kids, but a bitch for the coat closet.

"Karate Baby," according to the girls.  I spent a day cleaning up the garage in order to make room for Kris' van (we want to make sure we can keep it warmer in the mornings for when temperatures start to plummet and we have to load the kids up for school.)  I hung Karate Baby here up as a marker for the van, as I was fresh out of tennis balls and needed an indicator for when to stop pulling in the van.  I think it's a much better solution.

Finally got these stupid things off the ground. . .

Haven't hung up the bikes yet - that came later.

I know you can't really tell, but I cleaned and reorganized the shed while I was at it.  

. . . and now Kris can pull her van in.  'Cause I'm awesome.

Abby was SUPER excited that this cereal exists, and demanded a picture of her 'feeding' Darth Vader a red lightsaber marshmallow.

Uncle Chris and Tucker swung by one night for some beers.  Tucker's incredibly popular around these parts (though he doesn't care for Watson as much as Bailey does.)

Abby's 2015-2016 School Picture.  Turned out pretty good.

(We're ordering retakes.)

Typical Sunday morning around here.  Netflix and blankets.

Watson's typical hangout spot.  We gave up trying to keep him off the back of the couch.  I think he likes the vantage point.

And, finally, there's this.  Doesn't look like much, you would have thought I had severed an artery with the amount of blood that poured out of it.  I was bent down to pick up a towel (I was going to go downstairs and exercise on the spin bike), and didn't see the cupboard door open (the lights were off.)  The corner of the door punched a wedge-shaped cut in my forehead, and I had to go to a local Urgent Care in order for them to glue it shut: the cut wasn't deep, but the wedge-shape prevented it from closing.  Long story short, I now have a scar on my forehead, which is kinda cool.  It's smaller than I'd like - I mean, if I'm going to have a prominent scar on my forehead, I'd like it to be bigger - but, after all, chicks dig scars.

- Brian