Yuletide Chaos

What's up, gang.

Well, we had ourselves yet another chaotic, Holiday weekend here at the House House. Our calendar fills up so damn fast this time of year that there's barely any breathing room on one's day off. Taking this into consideration, I took a 'mental health' day off of work on Friday, 12/8, in order to take care of crap around the house, run some errands, do some Christmas shopping, and otherwise get a little 'down time' in before the weekend's multiple engagements came roaring in.

And roar in it did, folks. Check it out. . . 

First up was Alayna's 'gig' at the Dow Gardens. The Midland High Orchestra collaborates with multiple locations throughout the city - businesses, nursing homes, hospitals, restaurants, whatever - and sends out kids some of their students to perform little mini-concerts throughout the city. It's a pretty cool program, and the students can get volunteer hours for it. The orchestra teacher usually pulls from the Honors Orchestra kids, seeing how they're the advanced group, and so Alayna usually performs at one or two of these gigs per week.

This time around it was just her on violin, her friend Lexi on cello, and some other random girl on bass. . . doing a little concerto thingy, just missing the viola (not sure if one was originally scheduled or not.)

Dressed up for the performance, of course.

Kris, Mom and Abby went down there to watch her perform (along with her orchestra teacher, Ms. Mamassian) - I was back at the house, wrapping up gifts.

Mini-Christmas concertos.

Stamps of approval.

After the hour-long performance, Kris got a couple pics of the quartet (minus the viola.)

Would it kill her to dress up in quasi-formal clothes for stuff like this? Nothing says 'concerto' like Chucks and a cut-off tee. . .

The next morning, Kris and I ran more errands around town, taking care of groceries and more Holiday crap while the girls were both at school. Once they got back, we shoved dinner down them real fast then drove over to the Central Auditorium for Northeast's Winter Concert. Because Abby is in the 8th Grade Orchestra (shown here), we had to sit through an hour's worth of 6th and 7th Grade orchestral performances first (though the majority of this was the wait between shows, where they had to strip and re-arrange the seating.)

Obviously, the 8th Grade Orchestra is the best one of the night, seeing how they're the veterans and everything, but they ran into some trouble this evening with timing.

Abby and her cello.

After the show, which I thought was pretty good but Abby was super upset about, the Johnsons and us managed to wrangle our girls together for the usual, after-concert, in-front-of-the-Christmas-Tree pics. . .

Not sure what's happening here.  Someone needs to get this kid a helmet.

In case you ever wanted some pictures of Abby and her cello, here's a bunch. . .

(. . . and another one with Ella.)

I'm sure their teacher would appreciate the instruments being used like this. . .

The very next morning, bright and early ( 6am, seriously), Ella was dropped off at our house. Getting Abby out of bed at 5:30am was loads of fun, but both girls had to be around and ready to hit the road for their 8am Pom Clinic down in Canton, MI. The Northeast pom coach wanted the entire team to go, but only eight of the girls ended up making it. We were concerned that we'd have to drive girls downstate for this, but - THANK GOD - one of the other pom moms offered to pick up Abby and Ella from our house and shulttle them down so we wouldn't have to worry about it. A good thing, too, as that may have killed me.

A bunch of schools throughout the state sent middle school teams downstate to participate in this event, which was a free, six-hour practice session. All the attending schools practiced and learned a new routine together, then took turns performing said routine within their own teams. My own school's team was there, and a few of my students actually got to meet Abby (I had mentioned how I have a daughter on the Northeast pom team, so they were on the look out.)

While Abby was still away downstate, Kris and I headed out to Freeland for her annual work Christmas dinner. Dr. Anderson selected Apple Mountain for the evening, and we rolled in around 6pm. Food was pretty good, but I only ate like half of mine and ended up boxing up the rest for a future lunch or whatever (I ordered a steak sandwich and they basically took a 12 oz tenderloin and slapped it between two huge loaves of bread, it was enormous.)

After dinner (which took a couple hours), the staff requested a group pic in front of the tree. This picture sealed the deal for Yours Truly: I'm getting a f***ing haircut. My receding hairline doesn't work with hair pulled back, gonna have to cut off my long, luscious locks. . .

The next morning, everyone had to scramble in order to make an early morning Advent church service downtown at First United Methodist Church (Kris' old church) because some bishop she likes hearing was doing the sermon. By the time we got back home around lunchtime, Kris started making practice batches of cake-cookies (I guess that's a thing?) in order to brush up on her baking skills for next weekend's big Christmas party over at the Sheahan's place.

These were really, really sweet - like, you can eat one bite before going into shock. She's gonna have to scale it back for next weekend.

In the afternoon, the girls at youth group over at the other church, and while they were out of the house Kris and I headed into the basement and wrapped up all the frickin' Christmas presents we've accumulated thus far. While we were doing this (and I apologize for not getting any pictures of this hours-long process, by the way), we did a Christmas movie marathon. Klaus, White Christmas, and my personal second-favorite Christmas movie, A Muppet Family Christmas.

After the presents were taken care of, the girls returned home, we had dinner, and then settled into another Holiday movie session. Thus concludes one of the busiest weekends we've had in a long, long time, folks. 'Tis the f***ing Season. . .

- Brian

Retirement on the High Seas

Hey gang.

Kris' boss (of the last five or six years or so) was retiring, after running a dental practice in town for, like, thirty-some years.  To celebrate his retirement, and to send him off into the sunset in style, the doctor's wife orchestrated a surprise retirement party in Bay City. . . on a boat.

Prior to boarding the boat, we posed for a picture in our matching shirts.

The Princess Wenonah - a river cruise boat - was secretly chartered, and Kris and all her coworkers (and their husbands, including Yours Truly) were invited along.  Someone arranged for us all to get matching shirts as well, and the doctor's wife managed to get the doctor to head into downtown Bay City under the guise of eating out for dinner.  Once they got down by the river, we met up with them and surprised him, all wearing those matching yellow shirts. 

After getting a group pic in our matching shirts, we boarded the Princess Wenonah and started off down the river, where we were to cruise out to the bay and back over the course of two or three hours.

Check it out. . .

So this cruise thing they chartered came with a few perks, namely a.) a free meal, and b.) a beer/wine bar.  They gave us 8 drink tickets per person to redeem as well (an Oberon or a High Noon ran about 5 drink tickets, a Miller Lite or a White Claw 4 tickets, etc.) 

When we first departed from the dock, we all just grabbed a drink and sat around at a couple tables so that the doctor could open up some of his retirement gifts. . .

Kris and her coworkers all chipped in and bought him an engraved decanter and glasses set, all etched with the 'dental logo' (or whatever it's called) and his name.

(I didn't keep that yellow shirt on very long.)

Kris bought him a harmonica as a cheap, little side gift because I guess he was taking harmonica lessons for a bit. Some inside joke I wasn't privy to.

Watching a pic/video slideshow someone had made.

Cruising down the river, at intervals we'd pass through or under multiple bridges like this.

Heading up to the second level of the boat.

A little windy up top, my hair doesn't usually look like this.

On the second level, they had a live band playing Tom Petty covers (the doctor being a huge Tom Petty fan.)

The U.S.S. Edson.  I don't know the history of this ship, or why it's just anchored in the river like this, but I picked up a shirt once from a Goodwill that had the silhouette and name of the ship on it.

After a couple drinks a lot of the passengers went upstairs to listen to the band.

Kris and he coworkers (and some random lady, heading back down the lower level, photobombing the pic.)

The evening's weather was perfect for sunset photography - I spent a lot of time snapping pics.

This has to be just super awkward for the band, having people just sitting there all quiet and boring like.

Another selfie.  Kris likes her selfies.

Like I'm not going to snap a pic of a sailboat as it passes through the sun's rays reflected on the water. . .

Once we hit the open water of the bay, the boat did a big turnaround and began the long cruise back down the river.

Coming back down the river towards the city. . .

Shot of the bar

Passing another bridge

As we approached the docks it was about 10pm, and we had been on the water for a few hours.  A pretty cool little cruise, I could definitely be talked into doing something like this again.

- Brian