''The Christmas Pre-Season,'' or, ''November''

One of television's greatest villains, making a dastardly SNES appearance. . .

What up, players.

November flew by this year, which is to be expected:  the second Halloween is over we all put on our Christmas pants and start counting down towards Thanksgiving Break and the beginning of the Holidays.  Aside from stuff we've previously mentioned - getting ready for the Holidays, etc. - November could basically be summed up as The Month of Leaves and Girl Scout Cookies.  That's about all we did this month.

Think I'm joking?  Check this out. . .

Okay, so Kris did take the girls out to see Wicked - one of her favorite broadway plays.  They didn't see it on Broadway, though, but the DeVos theater in Grand Rapids (pretty sure that's what the theater is called.)  She bought the tickets over the summer (I won't even begin to talk about how much those cost us) and over the course of the last couple months has been playing songs from the show for the girls.

Can you tell they're excited?

Me?  I don't fancy myself a theater fan, and I don't care for musicals.  So, while Kris and the girls went to their show, I had them drop me off in Rockford (some fifteen minutes or so north of the theater) to BP's house, where we passed our time drinking beer and playing Super Nintendo.  Which, obviously, is waaaaay more fun than watching the backstory about the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz.

They ended up getting medium-quality seats (I'm not sure the actual name of the section is, but it's not the super-nice seats, but they're not in the nosebleed section where you can't see anything, either.)  They ended up being good for the kids, I guess.

Hough girls are big fans of selfies.  As I'm sure you know by now.

Meanwhile, back in Rockford. . .

Here's a shopping list we found on the kitchen counter that the girls made.  Seems pretty legit to me.

An outtake from this year's Hough Family Christmas Card, which I shot the second week of the month.  Can you guess how much fun Kris is having?

We took our family portraits with all the leaves on the ground ('cause leaves are Fall-ish), but afterwards it was one of my main weekend goals to clear the yard of all the tree debris.  We had experienced a fairly long - and noticeable, for this time of year - cold snap towards the beginning of the month, and as a result, all the leaves from the trees fell all at once.  Thank God I invested in a Ghostbusters-esque backpack leaf-blower, which made short work of the raking process.  In an hour I had blown all the leaves into a 4 ft x 20 ft long leaf pile (the pic shown here was after we had hauled several tarp-loads away.)  I seriously need to invest in larger tarps, though.

Making progress

(These guys aren't very much help.)

These pictures don't do this pile justice - it stood above the curb by a couple feet, extended about six feet from the curb, and ran the duration of our property line.  It was insane.

. . . and, of course, the next week I had to start over once again.  I f***ing hate Fall.

Cookie Season begins.  I hate Girl Scout Cookies with passion:  Kris is a co-leader so it's become a pretty big part of our Fall lives, with both girls running around collecting orders, and cookie boxes from various members of their respective troops taking up space in our house.

This was after several orders were picked up from our house by various parents.  It's like living in a warehouse.

Hawking wares at a booth outside a Home Depot.

Collecting food for the poor - pretty standard Holiday season charity work.

On a Girl Scout field trip to. . . the Dentist's office.  Edge.  Of.  Your.  Seat. 

Studying geography and science.  We celebrate all things nerdy in this household.

Abby and her BFF, Larkin, on a play date while Kris took Alayna and her BFF, Maddie, out to a theater to see Wonder.

I had no interest in seeing a movie about a deformed kid who gets bullied but somehow ends up with a happy ending.  I like my movies with explosions and one-liners, thank you very much.

Fancy sleepover dinner for the ladies.

Setting up my classroom after Thanksgiving Break (I took other pictures showing off more Christmas lights and decor in my room, but unfortunately my students' names and work were visible in those shots, so I can't post them (FERPA.)

Our 8th grade team this year adopted a sturgeon as part of some Michigan Tech math/science unit, and our science teacher is raising the fish in her room throughout the school year.  Our 8th graders named it Bubbles (I know, it's horrible.)  In the spring, we're going to go on a field trip to release the fish into the Tittabawassee River.  Something to do with science and conservation or something, I don't know.

On yet another Girl Scout quest, collecting toys for the less-fortunate.  'Tis the Season.

My classroom, all primed and ready to roll for our annual Constitutional Convention simulation (one of my favorite - and the students' favorite - activities we do in class this year.)

- Brian

Randoms from November

Walking back from the Larson house after school. . .

And so we find ourselves at the end of another month, America.

November was frickin' busy. . . and abnormally warm.  Those of you who respect the knowledge of the worldwide scientific community could probably blame this in on climate change and global warming.

Those of you who are Republicans could probably blame this on Obama.

We Houghs really didn't mind the warmer weather, but towards the end of the month we were ready for the leaf-raking season to be over and done with, and embraced the colder temperatures when they finally got off their ass and decided to show up to Mid Michigan.  Looking back we definitely kept busy these last few weeks, and aside from the crap I've talked about before in previous installments this month, below is a list of random stuff that otherwise befell the Houghs 2.0.

Enjoy.

Abby reaches for some leaves to pull down (her vertical isn't quite there yet.)

Just like they did in the Primaries, the girls accompanied me to our local polling location to Vote (I had the day off, so we went up in the late morning and experienced no lines whatsoever- must've missed the before-work rush, thank God.)  Sadly, the Third Party candidate we were supporting didn't have a shot at winning, but we still wanted to show the girls the importance of backing the candidate you felt was the best choice, not necessarily the 'lesser of two evils.'

Fall debris on the back patio

Alayna had a sleepover with one of her BFFs from school, Madi.  Kris took the girls (along with Abby and her neighbor friend from across the street, Reba) out for dinner at McDonald's. . . all by herself.  I was lucky enough to stay behind and not deal with a gaggle of little girls in public.

Putting the kids to work.

Kris was in charge of Girl Scout Cookies this year for the troop she's co-leading.  I was obviously pretty cool with this gigantic stack of food in my living room.

Yes, that's in Sharpie.  Having kids sucks.

I was able to catch this dude with a telephoto just as he was making a mad dash across the street from the neighbors' house.  Homeboy really wanted that gourd.

Our lazy dog

We let the girls put up their Christmas tree in the basement the weekend before Thanksgiving, since it's not the main one and only serves as a spill-over receptacle for all the ornaments that we've deemed 'not cool enough' for our main, Hallmark-ridden tree upstairs.

(She's special.)

The not-quite-finished product (as you know from an earlier post, we bought a star for it this year.)

Picnics in the living room

We drove up for a Saturday visit to Clare one weekend, as we hadn't done so in awhile and wouldn't be around for Thanksgiving.  While we were there the girls busted out our old Bop It game (circa 1994) from the game closet downstairs.  The Extreme version was too much for the kids, but they liked the normal one.

Dad shows her how it's done. . .

Messy, messy guinea pigs.  Kris and I are starting to think we bit off more than we could chew with these furballs. . .

My shadow.

Breaking out the Christmas mugs (and that annoying Snowman that sits atop our toilet every Holiday season - the girls love him.)

Festive kitchen

Festive record collection

When Granny passed, Yours Truly took the opportunity to loot about six or seven car-loads of stuff from her house.  Among my plunder were three totes worth of Christmas decorations, including these Nutcrackers. . . which we had to ban the girls from playing with.

The Friday before Thanksgiving, as previously mentioned, is the traditional starting point for the Hough Holiday Season.  This dates back to when I had a week off of work at my old school in Orlando, and so our holidays technically started that Friday before Thanksgiving.  Staying true to tradition, I hauled up the many, many totes of Christmas crap - except for the totes containing Christmas tree ornaments, which we save until Black Friday - and had the girls help me set things up.

. . . so of course it ended up turning into a big, yule-tide fight between the two girls.

'Tis the season.

Due to the awesome warmer weather, I put the house lights up the second week of November, but didn't turn them on until Black Friday (as to not appear tacky.)  I then got to sit back and pity all of my neighbors, who waited until after Thanksgiving to put up their lights, and got to do so in 20-degree weather.

Another day, another girl scout cookie booth.  This time at a local K-Mart.

Abby and Susie

Our mountainous stack of Girl Scout Cookies in the living room and shrunk considerably. . .

Taking a break from some Holiday shopping at the Midland Mall.  Abby didn't know what this phone was all about - her brain couldn't wrap around the fact that it was plugged into a wall and you had to pay to use it.  I'm frickin' old.

Susie and Fuzzy, piggin' out over some Timothy Hay. 

Dinner and a Movie in the basement. . . in front of our not-so-big screen TV.

That's toothpaste, America.  Why did I take a picture of this, you might ask?  Because it's on THE FRICKIN' CEILING.  And Yours Truly sure as hell didn't put it there. 

First Egg Nog cocktail of the 2016 Holiday season.

Abby's troop, freezing their collective asses off at another cookie both (this time outside Family Video.)

No idea why everyone's so happy, here - it was freezing outside.

Abby's Sales Pitch

Huddle time

. . . and again at yet another Girl Scout cookie booth.  I'm SO done with cookies and girl scouts this year.

No idea where or when this was taken.  Kris doesn't help much with this blog anymore.

Alayna had a friend from school, Dani, over for a play date one Saturday. 

Kris and I bought ourselves some Fitbits this year, since we decided we're getting to the age where we need to start taking better care of ourselves.  Neither of us need to lose weight or anything like that, but we're definitely out of shape.  Motivating each other to get off our asses once and awhile can't be a bad thing, I guess.  She got the Alta and I picked up the Charge 2 (which has all the same features as the Alta, just with a bigger screen and a heart-rate monitor.)

An afternoon stroll down Raponos Drive with Dr. Watson

- Brian