Back to the Tropics, Day I

Welcome back, Internet.  Prepare thyself for an adventure of epic proportions.

It had been three long years since the Houghs last embarked on a eight/nine-day venture down to Florida.  Three long years since we hit up theme parks, overspent on food and drinks, and nurtured sunburns under swaying palm trees.  Covid had a big part to play in all of this, sure - prices have been up ever since Society collapsed in the Spring of 2020, and we've been keeping a close eye on flights, rental car companies, Airbnbs, and park ticket bundles since 2021.  Finally, in the early months of 2020, we decided to pull the trigger and put a concrete plan into action.

We were lucky enough to purchase our Delta flight tickets months before gas prices rose astronomically following Russia's inevitable invasion of Ukraine in February (had we waited a couple more months, they would have cost us double.)  We ended up getting ours for a little over $200 apiece (thank God), which is an absurdly low price nowadays.

For our lodging, we once again decided to stay at the Blue Heron Resort, our hotel choice on our last trip, due to its convenient location, wonderful amenities, decent price, and familiarity.  Our old Host was no longer renting his condo, which was a shame, but we found another Host in the same building that was decently well-rated (although he wasn't a Super Host, which I'll be talking about in a little bit.)  A lower floor, but the same floor layout and features, we knew exactly what we were walking into.

The rental car situation proved a little more challenging, however.  Last time, I went with an online company that was well-rated and we were able to nab a Kia Optima for something like $250 all week, which was an awesome deal.  Since most of the rental car companies sold off their fleets in 2020 due to the Pandemic, prices were through the roof for rental cars - so much so that we contemplated utilizing Uber or Lyft for all our transportation needs while on vacation.  This left a lot of unforeseen variables in our day-to-day plans - no one picks you up, you have a shitty driver, you run late to parks and your day gets thrown off, etc.  In the end, however, Kris stumbled upon a site called Turo, which is basically Airbnb but for vehicles. For about $400 - still a decent price - we had the owner of a Ford Focus leave their car for us at the Orlando International Airport and we were able to use that for the entirety of our trip.  This worked out so well that we're planning on using this service again for our next Florida trip (unless rental car prices plummet to their pre-Pandemic levels, of course.)

Lastly, the parks.  We decided we weren't going to revisit the Universal Orlando theme parks this time around.  For starters, neither of our girls are really into Harry Potter anymore, and that was the main draw for them last time around.  We were also less than impressed with the parks outside of the Harry Potter stuff - the crowds, while smaller than Disney's, were far more noticeable, and in the end the kids preferred the Disney experience over the Universal alternative.  Instead, we bought some bundle tickets for Discovery Cove, Sea World, and Aquatica - all owned by the same company:  Kris and the girls really wanted to swim with dolphins at Discovery Cove, and while that's ridiculously expensive, for $60 more you could get unlimited access and free parking to Sea World (the aquatic zoo) and Aquatica (their equivalent to water parks like Disney's Typhoon Lagoon.)  This made Discovery Cove's ticket price easier to stomach, and gave us something water-based to do for the first few days of our trip, when the weather's Real Feel temperature was hovering in the low 100s.

I'll get more into detail with each of these aspects as we get to them in the following blog posts, so for now I'll just wrap this up and start you off with the first installment of pictures and videos chronically the Houghs' epic return to their once-home of Florida.

Behold. . .

Day I

The Houghs Go South, or the Establishment of Headquarters

In the late morning, we loaded up the van - checking and double-checking the luggage - and began loading the kids up.  The previous evening the girls and I had dropped the dogs off at Shelby's in Coleman, where the two shitheads once again shared a cage for a week amongst a room full of load-ass dogs.

Setting off down US-10.

By the time we hit Birch Run, we were kinda hungry, and Kris and I didn't want to mess with paying airport prices for family-of-four's lunch, so we stopped off and hit up this Jimmy John's.

Chowing down while driving down I-75.

Entering scenic. . . Romulus.

As usual, Kris didn't want to stop off at The Landing Strip to try their Salisbury steak special.  One of these days. . .

Like last time, Kris' uncle Wayne let us park our van at his house while we were away, which is super convenient because he's like a five-minute drive from the airport.  This time around, however, he was actually on hand to drive us up there himself, so we made it to the airport with plenty of time to spend.

Dropped off at Departures, Kris makes sure she has all her necessary shit in her purse before saying adieu to the van.

Self check-in kiosks now allow you to print tags for and weigh your checked luggage, which saves a ridiculous amount of time.  Because Kris is a Gold Member (whatever that means, we have some kinda card that racks up Delta miles or something, I have no idea how it works), we were able to check all three suitcases - the girls', plus the one Kris and I share - for free.  Can't be free, folks.

We had zero issues checking in our luggage, and security was easier than I had ever previously experienced.  I queued into a line where you didn't have to pull stuff out of your carry-on luggage, with the girls in front of me, and when it finally came time to walk through the full-body scanner, the TSA agent saw that I was with two minors and told me not to worry about it.  With all this great luck we'd been having up to this point, we reached our terminal with about 90 minutes to spare.

So what did we do in the terminal for an hour and a half?  Well, at first we poked in to a couple different shops, but at the DTW - as in other airports - they're all pretty lame and over-priced.  After about 20 minutes or so we got bored with this, and the girls asked if we could ride the tram.  What the hell else was there to do?

It was almost embarrassing how excited they were to ride this thing.

I was the only one carrying a carry-on bag - my Swiss Army backpack, which was heavy as f*** because it was filled with electronics, camera equipment, and anything else heavy so as to lighten our checked suitcases' weight.  I'd set it down whenever I possibly could.

Kris, texting her group of moms. . . as usual.

We ended up taking this tram back and forth across the terminal like three times - not kidding - and on one occasion we found that we had the entirety of one of the cabin's to ourselves.  Cowabunga.

With about 40 minutes before our departure, we decided to mosey on over to our gate.  The flight was on time - thank God - so we had some time before they called for general boarding.  Kris ran over to Qdoba and picked up the kids some pop, chips, and queso while they played on their phones (and I played Civ VI on my Nintendo Switch.)

Heading down to the plane, at long last.

Pre-flight selfie.

I think it's a law you have to give your kid the seat with a view (I'm an aisle man myself, but on trips like this I'm always forced to take the middle seat like a bitch.)

I had Alayna take a few pics from the window as we began our trip South. . .

Coming into muggy-as-hell Orlando, FL. Took us 3 1/2 hours because we had to fly around a severe thunderstorm that covered everything from Atlanta down to Jacksonville.  This was the first of a few different set-backs that would cause us to arrive at our condo about an hour later than we had hoped for.

Upon landing at the OIA, Kris took Alayna and the two of them darted into the women's bathroom.  While Abby and I stood outside, waiting patiently, a random Australian man ran up to me and gave me a huge bear hug.  He had seen the Masonic hat I was wearing and, as a fellow Freemason, wanted to say 'hi.'  You can imagine how weirded out Abby was by all of this.

Knowing this airport like the back of our hand, we found our luggage in no time at all.

Unfortunately, we had to carry all of our suitcases up multiple escalators and elevators in order to access the parking garage of the A Terminal (our flight and baggage claim were both in B Terminal), where our Turo rental was parked.

Our ride for the week. . . a 2013 Ford Focus hatchback.

Using a keypad entry with a code texted by the owner, Kris was able to access the car and then, in the center console, she found the parking garage ticket, the Florida Sunpass (allowing us to avoid tolls during our trip), and the key vob.

The trunk was ridiculously small, so the girls had to stack their suitcases in the middle of the backseat, between the two of them.

Sunset over the OIA.

Back on the 417.

About to get off on a very familiar exit. . .

Like last time, Kris ignored my suggestion and took the wrong exit onto John Young Parkway.  This time around, she just pulled a Florida U-turn instead of taking the entire Town Loop route.

We once again had to stop off at our old Publix, in Hunter's Creek, in order to pick up groceries and snacks for the condo.  The girls were both pretty spent, and Kris and I had short fuses since we had been wrangling kids all day, but we were able to snatch up everything we needed - snacks, breakfast stuff, coffee, booze, drinks for the girls, etc. - in less than an hour.

Around 9:30pm - about an hour and a half later than we had wanted - we finally pulled into the Blue Heron Resort. . . where Kris had to stand in line at the check-in desk behind a couple of college girls who had to have the resort's small print spelled out for them in Moron-ese.  It wasn't until about 10pm before we finally had all of our luggage and groceries unloaded from the car and brought into our condo.

Didn't get a walkthrough video of the place until the last day of our stay there - so stay tuned for that - but this is me and Kris' master bedroom.

Abby inspects the bunk beds, which is exactly what they had last time. . . albeit lacking the creepy Mickey and Minnie Mouse stuffed animals and decor.

The decor of this place wasn't as nice as the last place, and upon further inspection we found that a lot of the furniture was pretty dated.  Still, at least it was clean.

After everything was unpacked, and the girls were put to bed, I felt it was necessary to open up a bottle of my standard Florida Vacation whiskey from the Ole Smokey distillery.  Our first day of theme parks kicks off tomorrow - stay tuned. . . 

- Brian

The Five Minutes That Was August

Welcome back to the Land of Houghs.

August flew by in, like, five minutes.  I kid you not.

I've previously mentioned how frickin' busy we've been with Back to School crap, but I want to emphasize that since Yours Truly is a teacher, Back to School season becomes exponentially more hectic.  That's all I've been doing lately - lesson planning, buying stuff for my classroom, moving stuff around in and decorating my classroom, etc. etc.  Besides some vacations and highlights here and there - most of which we've delved into in other posts - August ended up being a very mundane, if not SHORT, month.

Here's a snippet of some of the crap that we didn't touch on in other posts, though.

Enjoy. . .

We bought a new grill at the beginning of the month, which was awesome.  After weeks of research, I settled on this copper-toned Webber grill, which is the deluxe version of their famous model (it comes with a temp guage and an ash-removing tray - both super-handy features.)

. . . obviously I bought a crapload of accessories for it as well.

Found an old box of cassettes in the basement, and finally got around to hooking up a pretty high-end dual-cassette player to my stereo receiver.  Kris wasn't a big fan of this new set-up initially, but I'm sure it'll grow on her (I might have to make her a mix-tape to seal the deal with this, we'll see. . .)

I bought this tape from a Big Wheel store in Clare back in 1993, based solely on the front image alone.  The lyrics were terrible, and Dad ended up confiscating the cassette from me when I was young, finally giving it back to me when I was in my teens and no longer thought the music was good (it was terrible.)  Oddly enough, I still have this cassette, which I'm going to have to get around listening to again in the future.  I doubt it holds up, though.

The first week of August, Dad and I decided to tackle the boxes and boxes of photos that Granny had in her basement.  This would end up being one hell of an undertaking, but we both had the time off of work, so we rolled up our sleeves and spent an entire day sorting through papers, pictures, negatives, and other random bullshit that hadn't gotten picked up when we all went through her house back in March.  Like, say, this horrifically racist 'Get Well' card from the 1930s. . .

Grandpa Hough apparentely wasn't a big fan of the church back in 1928. . . he must've written this when he was a kid, long before he ended up being a minister in the exact same church.  Kinda funny.

Some of the pictures Dad gave me from Granny's - he wanted me to have all the pre-divorce pictures that Granny had of our family, so I was able to separate them by year and now have the awesome task of scanning each and every one of them (whenever my work load slows down and I have a chance to breathe. . .)

It wouldn't be a trip to Granny's without Yours Truly loading up another van-load of stolen plunder, like this solid-oak, 12-person kitchen table.  Definitely a step up from what we had before.

Swimming at Stratford Park again - one of the girls' favorite summer hang-out spots.

This old lady turned 35 this year (and this is what passes for a birthday cake around these parts.)

Bedtime reading (Abby's really taken off with reading - she took to it a lot faster than her sister did, and Alayna was at the top of her class for it.)

More beach time - we ended up going there at least once a day for a week or two in August, just to break up the day (like I said before, it's a 3-minute drive from our house.)

Grandma Jordan swung out one day to stop in for a visit. . .

. . . and an apparent makeover.

. . . and a tea party.

My new school only gives teachers desktop computers, so I went out and bought an Acer Chromebook that was insanely high-rated on nearly every site I researched.  Since 95% of my work is done via Google Office and Google Classroom, I don't need the storage capacity of a traditional laptop, nor the processing power, so the Chromebook was the optimal choice.  I still plan on replacing my MacBook Pro in a year or two with a fancy new iMac, but this will definitely get me by in the meantime.

Trevor and Sara drove down from Clare one Saturday with their kids to hang out and spend the night at our house like we had done at theirs (back in July, around the Fourth, if you'll remember.)  They showed up right after lunch, so we decided to take the kids down to the park to swim and play in the sand for a couple hours while we caught up and had some beers on the beach.

Good ol' Trevor McNerney.

Okay, so this picture wasn't supposed to be of Kris, folks.  No, this picture - which I took on the sly - was meant to be of the guy off to the right.  If you look closely, he's holding up a FRICKIN' FISH to his mouth and rapping into it like it's a microphone.  I want to be this guy's best friend SO bad. . .

Drying off time

 

Grillin' up some dead animals back at the house (our grill's maiden voyage, actually.)

Kid section

After-dinner catfight

Forts in the basement.  Never gets old.

Alayna bought this chair with her own money from a Salvation Army for $5, and it has become her favorite reading spot in the house.

Go Lions

We're planning on buying a house this winter/spring, and have informed the kids of this in the past, so Abby decided to help us out and draw us a detailed side-view diagram of the exact house she's looking for.  Hopefully she relayed this information to Kris so that she can scope it out on Zillow.

Just another day in the Hough house. . .

Lunch at Jimmy John's on the way home from church. . .

(You can see Kris in the background, placing her order. . . and simultaneously pretending she doesn't know the children climbing around in the restaurant.) 

At a neighborhood party at one of the houses down the road. . .

Ivy Lane squad

No, there's no booze in this - they were handing out shot-glasses of water.  Give us some credit, Internet.

At Plymouth Park for a play date with Alayna's friend, Samantha

The kids in the neighborhood had organized a 'parade' (yes, seriously) one afternoon.  No idea what it was for, but this is what it basically entailed.

A Mercedes-Benz, several kids on bikes. . . and no floats.

But then this.

- Brian