The Last Teenager

I'm not entirely sure who wrote this. . .

What's up, readers.

The youngest of the Houghs entered her Teenage Years this weekend. Abby told us she didn't want a huge party or anything too crazy this year for her birthday - which, honestly, was 100% cool in our book, as those parties are usually a pain in the ass to plan and manage- and instead wanted just a casual sleepover followed by eating out at a restaurant.  Kris and I were totally on board with this plan.

So yesterday (Saturday) was the sleepover day, as we obviously couldn't have something like that on her actual birthday (today) because she's got school early Monday morning. Today we just let her and her best friend, Ella, hang out for a bit, then went out to eat at - ugh - Olive Garden (don't ask me why this is the place she chose. . . out of all the frickin' restaurants in Midland.)

All in all, a very, very low-key birthday for the Youngest of Houghs, but, then again, she's about as opposite from her older, far-more-social sister as one could get - she's always preferred to have one or two friends on hand, with not a lot of craziness going on.  So that's what she got this weekend - a very chill induction into her teenage years.

Check it out. . .

We kicked off Saturday morning with a trip to Planet Fitness, where Yours Truly has been spending a lot of time lately.  As a Black Card member, I'm allowed to bring one guest with me per gym visit, so I took Abby along with me.  Alayna, as a high school student, took advantage of Planet Fitness' summer program where high school students get to use the gym facilities free of charge throughout the summer.  Her and two of her best friends - Cristina and Lexi - all registered for temporary Planet Fitness accounts on their phones, and accompanied us up to the gym for the morning. I was able to sneak this pic and video of them utilizing these crazy stair machines while we were there (left to right: Cristina, Abby, Alayna, and Lexi.)

After the gym, the girls all hung out around the house for the afternoon. Eventually, Cristina went home and Ella came over and we grilled some steaks for dinner.

In the evening, Abby and Ella tried out these creepy, foaming face masks as par of their 'spa' routine. Looks like frickin' leprosy, if you ask me.

After-spa dancing, apparently. . .

Abby has been obsessed with the horror movie It lately, hence the red balloons everywhere and the 'I heart Derry' cake.  Girl's a bit creepy sometimes.

Teens are so content with just hanging out sharing what they're looking at on their phones with one another.  Sounds soul-crushingly boring to me, but whatever. . .

Selfies with these two. . .

The next morning, following a late-night sleepover in the basement, the girls woke up to smoothies with these ice-cream-flavored, edible straws of some kind that Kris found. . . somewhere.

Gift-opening time.  Abby's at the age now where for birthdays she's basically going to get cash from here on out - that's all she wanted.  Throwing $100 in tens so she can grab one whenever she wants to head out and do something is the way to go with this kid - she spends her money on doing things instead of tangible crap.

Kris got her tickets to this Six musical that Abby's been listening to a lot lately on Amazon Music.  From what I understand, it's a stage musical based on the six wives of Henry VIII.  Doesn't sound all that entertaining to Yours Truly, but, then again, I'm not gay.

Later that morning, the girls - and Kris - went outside to make rubber band bracelets on the newly-upgraded back patio.

This is a lazy, lazy dog.

White trash charcuterie board, teen edition.

(Kris always appreciates it when I sneak pictures of her eating.)

After lunch, it was time to do the obligatory cake thingy. . .

Kris clearly didn't give a lot of thought and attention into candle arrangement on this thing - this is a total hot mess.

She got way too into wielding this gigantic, razor-sharp chef's knife - we had to take it way from her.

Later on in the afternoon, Abby and Ella decided to bike down to Stratford Woods Park in order to utilize the park's BMX bike park.  Oddly enough, this was closed - no idea why, there was no sign out or anything like that - so we had them bike back, change into swimsuits, and we drove them back up there to swim instead.

The girls wanted to bring the dogs.  Which, you know, is always fun. . .

They were a little reluctant to get in at first - this 'lake' is arguably pretty gross.

Besties

(Yes, they own matching Crocs.)

Kris is very proud of her newly-acquired beach tote-thingy. I forget what the name of these things is, but they're currently trendy - made out of the same rubber as Crocs, and perfect for beach/lake/pool excursions.

This is a bizarre perspective - the hole she's in is nowhere near as deep as it looks.

Having a blast.

Ella attempts to box a horse fly.

Water must've been cold, who knows.

Heading back to the van after an hour or so - our time there was cut short when Yours Truly suddenly spotted a tick on the beach blanket (this summer is supposedly going to be very, very bad for ticks. . . which is rare for down here in the Lower Peninsula.)

Kris' boss' wife, Melanie (who, if you'll recall, accompanied Kris and Abby when they went to New York City over Spring Break) was nice enough to drop off this card and balloons at our front door while we were away at the park.  Super nice of her.

Samson cuddling with some plush dinosaur thing Abby picked out at the store.

Watson, aforementioned plush dinosaur, and some handsome guy hanging out on the couch.

We always let the kids pick where they'd like to eat dinner on their birthday, and Abby - for whatever f***ing reason - really, really likes Olive Garden.  So that's where we went.

Some pre-meal pics at the table.  Abby and Kris.

Yours Truly and the Cannonball.

Kris wanted a selfie of the entire family in one picture (because it's Kris) so Abby took this one. . . but then Kris didn't like her face in it. . .

. . . so she made everyone take this one.

Alayna and I stuck to the Soup/Salad/Breadsticks thing - neither of us were super hungry, and I'm usually okay with a beer and just something small to pick at anyway - but Kris and Abby ordered full pasta dishes.  After a lackluster dinner - seeing how Olive Garden is basically an Italian version of the microwaved-entrees you'd find at a T.G.I. Friday's or Applebee's - we went home, watched a movie, and called it a weekend.  So there you go, America - the last Hough has now successfully entered her teenage years.  See ya next time.

- 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