A Feast Best Served Cursed

Detroit prepares to lose.  Again.

Happy Turkey Day, people.

I hope everyone out there thoroughly enjoys this special day of giving thanks, watching the Lions, gorging themselves blind, and, more likely than not, engaging in fisticuffs with complete strangers over $50-off tablets at a Wal-Mart.

'Tis the season.

Here at the Houghs, our original plans - to celebrate Thanksgiving at the Voigts' house, as we have the last four years in a row - were kibosh'd when Abby fell sick a few days ago.  This would mark the second year in a row that a Hough began projectile-vomiting around Thanksgiving (as you'll be so good to remember), and reaffirmed our suspicion that, indeed, there exists a dreadful Hough Family Thanksgiving Curse. 

Oddly enough, Abby actually felt fine the morning of Thanksgiving, when we dropped Mom and John off at the airport - it was Alayna that came out of left field and started running a high fever.  The night before, she had complained of headaches, and had voluntarily gone to bed early - something that never happens.  Sure enough, this morning she woke up hot, and - after returning from dropping Mom and John off at the airport - napped until nearly noon.  

And so, not wanting to spread sickness among the Voigt household and their party guests like the Bubonic Plague, we opted to sit this year out, circle the wagons, and have our own very own, private Thankgiving.

We found Vernors down here!

This had been the first time we've celebrated Turkey Day by ourselves since 2007, and likewise we wanted to make sure we didn't go bat-shit crazy with the feasting.  Kris picked up a chicken from Publix in place of a traditional turkey, seeing how there were only two people who would most likely eat the bird (our kids are weird).  She also bought a few boxes of Thanksgiving staples while she was at it - Stove Top, mashed potatoes, a cherry pie, a loaf of gourmet bread, etc. 

After the girls were put down for their naps, Kris and I decided to throw up the Christmas Tree.  For whatever reason, this was way more difficult than it had been any other year.  Not sure why, exactly, but it took over an hour for the two of us to figure out how the damn thing fit together and plugged in.  

While we were on-again/off-again wrestling with our yuletide centerpiece, I was able to throw back a few beers and watch the Lions lose - something that NEVER happens down here in Florida - and Kris was able to kick-start our Thanksgiving mini-feast. . . 

Observe:

It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without watching the home team getting their asses beat.

Once the kids got up from their naps, unfortunately, Detroit vs. Houston magically transformed into Beauty and the Beast.  Surprise surprise.

Kris douches up the chicken. . .

After awhile of Beauty and the Beast'ing, the kids began to get bored, so I let them ride their ridables around in the newly-cleaned/organized garage (one of my 'To-Do' objectives during my week off of work). . .

 

Lemon Chicken, prepared with fresh lemons cut from our own backyard. . . (if you need some lemons, let us know - we're sitting on a truckload over here. . .)

 

Kris' spread.

We opted to have Thanksgiving out on our patio, since it was 73 degrees out and all.  Plus we have crap-loads of Christmas lights hung up, so it's festive as hell.  Can't argue with that.

Bring on the wine.

 

Not surprisingly, despite Kris' hours of slaving away over our Feast of Thanks, after a mere two minutes or so of 'I don't like this,' and 'that looks yucky,' the girls were officially fun-ed out with Thanksgiving, and retired to their easel to work on what I can only assume was an awe-inspiring collaborative masterpiece. . . (*pfft)

After dinner, Alayna lied down on the couch in front of the TV - being sick as she was, it wasn't too surprising that she didn't want to eat much.  Abby, on the other hand. . .

After an hour passed, Abby complained of being hungry, so Kris warmed up some random chicken-and-pasta dish she got from Sunchild.  I'm not sure what's in this recipe, but whatever it is, both girls generally take to it like a hobo to a crack pipe. . .

Abby reaches the bottom of her bowl.  Unbridled hell-fury ensues. . .

Before I continue with the pictures, I'd like to mention two Christmas movies I was forced to watch throughout the course of the evening.  Both are straight from the Rankin/Bass playbook, having been produced in the wake of Rudolph and the Red-Nosed Reindeer back in the '60s/'70s.

The first movie the girls chose to watch today (the official Hough start date for the Christmas 2012 season) was the accursed The Year Without Santa Clause.  I'll let you do your own research on this cinematic clusterf***. . . I wouldn't know where to begin summarizing this movie.  It's like the Rankin/Bass people went off into the wild for a month, sustaining themselves on nothing but peyote and their own over-inflated, humongo-egos. 

More or less, from what I can gather is that Santa wakes up one  morning, having a pity party, and Mrs. Clause, suffering from delusions of grandeur, recruits a couple of mentally handicapped elves from the factory floor to hijack Santa's reindeer and start an inter-climatory war between a pair of siblings whose utter disdain for one another rival the Gallagher brothers.

If that ridiculousness wasn't enough, my two tax deductions follow this horrifying hour-long waste of human effort by watching Rudolph's Shiny New Year.  I wasn't in the room for the majority of this movie, fortunately - I was still out in the garage, trying to wedge a flat-head screwdriver into my eye-sockets after watching the previous movie - so I'm not 100% clear on this movie's plot line, either.

Not that it needed one.

What I can piece together is that Rudolph, fresh off his victory over the Fog dilemma from his more well-known (and more stomachable) movie, is hunting down this human/elephant hybrid orphan who is bouncing out of control along the time/space continuum.  I'm not sure why.  Something about stopping a bad guy, I don't know.  Anyway, Rudolph somehow manages to discover the secret to time travel, and - in his infinite, quadrupedal wisdom - deems it beneficial for his cause to recruit a homo sapien neanderthalis specimen, an 84-year-old Don Quixote, and - I'm being completely serious, here - Benhamin f***in' Franklin.

Not sure how it ended, and frankly I don't care. 

After the kids passed out for the evening - which, at 7:30/8pm, didn't come nearly as soon enough as I would've liked - Kris and I threw in our favorite, get-ready-for-the-season movie, Some Like It Hot.  This has become a yearly tradition for us, though for the life of us we're not sure how it started.  Every year we decorate our Christmas tree to this movie, and I'm pretty sure I can say, with a modest degree of certainty, that we're the only couple in the continental United States to do this. . .

Christmas Cocktails: CHECK.  1 1/2 oz. Creme de Cocoa, 1 oz. Peppermint Schnapps, 1 oz. cream. Garnish with candy cane, get your own yule on appropriately.

(this isn't a dress)

We never put all the ornaments up - we save all the cheap, 'kid-proof' ornaments for the kids to throw up.  Not that we value their taste in ornament distribution, per se - they have a nasty tendency of clustering all their ornaments together in a way that would make many an art major off themselves with a shotgun. . .

**Updated Fri. 11/23 @ 9:32am. . .**

When the girls woke up in the morning, we set out the remaining Christmas Ornaments (the who-gives-a-shit-if-it-breaks ornaments) for the girls to hang on the tree. . .

(. . .needless to say, both girls were pretty stoked up about having a fully-decorated, 7 1/2 ft Christmas tree in their living room when they woke up.)

This is what our Instant Queue on Netflix looks like these days.  Could be a LOT worse.)

Abby managed to mangle a few jingle bells in the process, but she was able to do hang up a Christmas ornament or two this year.

- Brian

Grandma and Papa John, Pt. I

Picking up tourists from the airport. . .

Welcome back, readers.

Thanksgiving is nearly upon us, and for we union-loving, baby-sitters, that means a week off of work.

I'm sort of looking forward to this.

Thankskilling. Check it out. It rules.

It also means serious horribleness is about to go down for the Houghs; it always seems to around Turkey Day.  The Hough Family has always suffered from a terrible Thanksgiving Curse, dating back several hundred years when an ancestor of ours had an extramarital affair with a prominent turkey's wife.

I'm pretty sure how all that crap started.

Anyway, this year, we're sharing our time off with my folks - Grandma and Papa John - who flew in from Michigan on Saturday and are staying at Hough Manor until Thursday morning.  They were eager to spend a laid-back week with their granddaughters, relaxing in great weather, etc. etc. . . but holy shit have we ever put these two to work over the last couple of days.

Check it out:

Alayna shows Pinky the Orlando International Airport as we wait in the nearby Cell Phone Lot for Mom and John to clear the baggage claim area . . .

. . . you will be seeing plenty of Pinky over the next couple posts.  Alayna was selected to 'babysit' Pinky for her classroom this week.  I guess each kid in her class gets a week-long turn at home with the soiled stuffed bear.  (I desperately wanted to give this thing a bath in Clorox).

After picking up the grandparents, we bought some Chinese and ate out on the patio. . . (Papa John didn't get much eating done).

Papa John does floor exercises with Abby while Grandma and the Cannonball work on friendship bracelets. . .

Breaking in Papa John's knee. . .

At the end of Pinky's stay with us, we have to document his stay with us with pictures, notes, etc.  (I've had to reel in the inappropriateness like crazy this week. . .)

Pre-coffee interrogations

Fancyin' up Papa John's feet

Primed for a neighborhood constitutional

Wackiness ensues in the Playhouse of Terror

The Cannonball has mastered the Vulcan Death Grip

Pickin' peppers

The fruit trees had been growing out of control long before we even moved in to the house, and while they were bearing more than enough fruit, they weren't growing the right way.  Papa John was fortunately able to swoop in and prune the bejesus out of our fruit trees so that, in a year or two, they will be pumping out even more fruit and growing healthier.

See ya in Hell, conifer.

The Apple Tree meets its maker (. . .which I'm assuming is Johnny Appleseed, but I'm not a fruitologist.)

We also decided it was time to clear out the brush from behind the house, but every time I opened the door to weed-whack, mow, and raze back there, I was accosted by three pit bulls.  Apparently the cool thing to do down here is own pit bulls.  And apparently its really cool to let them roam about the neighborhood without a leash.  Awesome.

Farewell, Pineapple Pear Tree. . .

Grandma stands lookout for ravenous pit bulls. . .

Trimming up the Orange Tree (unfortunately, we had to tear out the Pepper Bush growing underneath it)

They may not look it, but these oranges were ripe.  Who knew.

Picking off fruits and peppers from discarded branches.

Tackling the root system from Hell with the trusty ol' pickaxe.

Kris was at this for about three hours.

Some of the salvaged peppers.  They're spicy, but also have a sweetness to them.  So far I've been using them a lot in eggs.

Consider this foe vanquished.

The Mandorin Tree.  Pruned to shape.

Shaping up the Lemon Bush.

Not sure what type of fruit tree this was.  But it's dead now.

I'll definitely have a lot more room to mow now.

Helping Grandma rake up the aftermath.

Besides laboring in the yard like a couple of field hands, we also employed my folks to help us with a few house projects.  Having someone around that actually knows what they're doing when it comes to house construction definitely comes in handy.

The Living Room has become a war zone.  Next up on the docket:  the Bookcase (stay tuned)

Behold Monster Bush.

This was taken over a month ago, after I trimmed it for over an hour.  This stupid bush fell over sideways, as the previous owner had bound the bottom of the bush with that white, plastic grating, forcing the branches to grow sideways.  This increasingly unbalanced weight caused the bush to eventually break through the grate and crash down onto the ground.

. . . and a few weeks ago, it came into bloom again.  So then we had ourselves a big Purple Monster Bush.

. . . but then Papa John and I went to war with the damn thing.

This probably took a solid 2 - 3 hours, with John and I trimming it back into a somewhat reasonable shape and Grandma and Kris hauling away debris.

It looks a little sparse now, but by Spring it should fill in those holes that we had to create in order to break apart the renegade branches. . .

More to come - stay tuned. . .

- Brian