Romulus, Black Friday, and Other News

Scenic. . . Romulus.

Happy Start-to-Christmas, Internet.

As you guys know, the Houghs travel downstate and celebrate Thanksgiving with Kris' side(s) of the family, and this year was no different.  Marcy came down with us again this year, and we ended up rolling into town around noon, stopping in briefly to see Kris' Uncle Jeff and Aunt Carol, before heading over to her Uncle Wayne's house to spend the rest of the holiday.  We ended up leaving around 8pm or so, which made this year's venture south kind of a whirlwind trip, but none of us really wanted to stay the night down there.

This movie is one of the greatest comedies ever made.

Anyway, the next day Kris and I (okay, just me) threw up the Christmas Trees (our new, fancy pre-lit one in the living room, and the girls' three-foot-tall, pre-lit tree in the basement), and, after the kids went to bed, Kris and I once again indulged in one of our personal favorite, Holiday traditions:  decorating the tree and having a couple Christmas cocktails while watching Some Like It Hot.

In summary, if you've stopped in to check out our Thanksgiving/Black Friday posts before, then this is practically identical to what we've done the last couple years.

. . . buuuuut just in case you're still curious:

Rolling into the Pearl of Michigan. . . .

Again, Kris wasn't down with stopping off at the Landing Strip for a quick steak-and-a-lap-dance.  Good ol' Queen Buzzkill. . . .

Margie's (at left) and Wayne's (right.)

Cousins.

Some people like to pride themselves with pairing certain wines with certain foods.  I personally like to think of myself as somewhat 'awesome' when it comes to pairing certain craft beers with certain events.

Watching what would eventually end up as another fine example of a Detroit Lions Thanksgiving ShitShow.

Hiding away in a makeshift fort between a couch and a wall.

Watching the Lions lose.

Women in the kitchen

I don't think I've ever once actually finished a game of Monopoly.

Sisters

Dance party

Just like last year, as it got dark out the girls all grew convinced that there were ghosts outside the house.  And, again like last year, they set off to capture photographic 'evidence' of aforementioned ghosts using their personal cameras.  Such as whatever the hell this is.

See?  Clearly proof of paranormal existence on the astral plane. 

Logging their 'facts' into a 'ghost book.'  Seriously.

Truly legit, empirically-based ghost facts.

The best part of marrying into Kris' family is all the venison sausage and jerky we score whenever we visit downstate.

The next afternoon, after a lazy morning of movie-watching and not participating in Black Friday craziness, I pulled out the girls' Christmas Tree and their tote of JV, not-quite-good-enough-for-the-living-room-Tree ornaments. . . .

The girls' tree - all 'prettied' up.  It takes a ridiculous amount of self-control on my part not to fix the holy hell out of this mess.

After the girls went to bed, it was time to kick off the start of the Official Christmas Season with my favorite Holiday cocktail, a Merry Irishman (Tullamore Dew Irish whisky, coffee liqueur, and Peppermint Schnapps.)

Our new tree (shown here) is programmed with nine LED lighting options, featuring white, multicolor, and seven additional alternating, blinking and fade-in/fade-out options.  My personal favorite is a gradual, alternating fade between white and multicolor, but, for the sake of decorating this evening, we kept it on plain ol', boring white.  Also known as Kris' favorite.

Daphne and Josephine, in over their heads as usual. . . .

We're strong Hallmark loyalists in this house, as you can see.

Watson assumes his usual pose for the evening.

Like I said before, this year Kris and I decided to end our annual ornament exchange tradition (seeing how we need to start slowing down our ever-expanding ornament collection) and begin a new, annual tradition of picking out one, single ornament for the tree.  This year's personalized Bronner's pickup represents our first Christmas in our new home.

Starting to fill up

The 2017 Hough Family Christmas Tree

- Brian

Romulus, Black Friday, and Some House Guests

Happy Belated Turkey Day, Nation.

I know I've mentioned this before, but we Houghs aren't huge on Thanksgiving.  That may have something to do with the fact that none of us in our family could really be described as 'big eaters,' or that my extended family is seemingly cursed with misfortune, accidents, and/or both during the holiday, and therefore do their best to downplay the event year after year.  Due to the latter, our own family, upon moving back to Michigan, opted to celebrate Thanksgiving with both sides of Kris' extended family instead.

Which I'm totally cool with.

So, once again, we'll be taking you all on a scenic trip to picturesque. . . Romulus, Michigan. And then afterward, back up to Midland where we took in two of Kris' cousin's kids - Scarlett and Kyan - for the weekend, threw up the Christmas Tree, and inadvertently introduced the girls to One Direction.

God help us all. . .

The dreaded Zilwaukee Bridge.  Kris and I both hate this with a passion. . . probably because the history of construction is down-right terrifying and it's not technically sound.

A couple hours later, rolling into Paradise on Earth.

The Landing Strip: best steak in town, evidently (Kris wouldn't stop.)

For the entirety of our visit, Kris and I didn't take any pictures.  It was harder for me than her, obviously.  Anyway, the girls both brought their cameras, so nearly all of the following pictures from our Romulus visit were either taken by Abby or the Cannonball (like this selfie.)

Dance party

Abby and Kris' cousin, Lily (yes, seriously - it's Kris' youngest aunt's youngest kid.)

These kids hid behind this couch playing on a tablet for a good part of the Lions game.  Kept them from making a crapload of noise, so I wasn't complaining.

One of our better 'couple' pics.

More weird selfies.

I don't think that was booze  (the Red Solo Cup was a bad choice on her part.)

This dog's a frickin' BEAST.

The girls spent about an hour outside taking pictures of the empty parking lot across the street: they were convinced their were ghosts in the cars, and kept trying to obtain pictorial evidence of paranormal activity.

Shitting their pants.

Seriously.  Ghosts.

They repeatedly came rushing into Wayne's house, where adults were sitting around after dinner and enjoying interruption-free conversation, to show us 'proof' that they had in fact seen ghosts in the parking lot.  What we found on the SD cards were a shit-load of blurry, poorly-executed night shots.  These girls have a lot to learn when it comes to nighttime photography.

On our way to Kris' Uncle Jeff's house, for a visit with her other side of the family.  We'd end up leaving around 8:30pm (we opted not to stay the night downstate this year), reaching Midland around 10:30 at night.  Kids slept the whole way back, which was awesome, but Kris and I were both dead on our feet.

The next morning - Black Friday.  You'll note that we all slept in and are clearly not in line outside a Best Buy.

Kris did some online browsing from her phone, though.  So that counts for something.

Later on in the day, Kris and the girls drove up to Clare to pick up her cousin Crystal's younger two kids, Scarlett and Kyan.  Their whole family - Crystal, her mom Mickey (Kris' mom's twin), the older sister Victoria, and them - had celebrated Thanksgiving in Clare with Kris' mom, and originally the plan was for the two kids to stay the weekend in Clare. . . but we all knew that Marcy's apartment was going to be nowhere near as much fun as our house (which is bigger, has videogames, etc.), so we offered to take them.

These kids played a shitload of videogames over the weekened (especially Kyan, who repeatedly drained the battery of the Wii U Gamepad.)

Kris, gettin' her hair did.

After dinner we took the kids out to Family Video to pick out a couple movies (and of course they went in costume.)

Alayna and Abby, as previously mentioned, discovered One Direction this weekend (Alayna's dancing here to one of their music videos, via Youtube.)  Perhaps it was a random YouTube find, perhaps it was the influence of a 6th grade girl staying wtih us for the weekend, but it became quite evident to Kris and I that both girls have fully embraced the 'boy band' phase.  They might not quite understand why they like these One Direction videos so much, but Kris - being  herself a once-superfan of New Kids on the Block - sure as hell does.  I wasn't quite ready for the whole boy-band crush thing yet, but I guess it's a right-of-passage for any dad who has to raise daughters.

Later that evening, once we had all four kids down for the night, Kris and I were ready for our annual Black Friday tradition:  decorating the Christmas Tree.  I had spent the last couple days trouble-shooting the lighting situation with the tree (two strands are completely burnt out, so this will be likely the last year we use this paritcular tree), having to string four new strings of lights on the tree and shaping the branches out how I like them.  With that set, and with kids in bed, it was finally time to mix up a Merry Irishman (shown here) and kick off one of our favorite Christmas-time traditions. . .

. . . and, of course, that meant we got to watch our annual Decorating the Tree movie.

We should purchase stock in Hallmark.

(Watson isn't much help.)

The finished product: the Hough Family's 2016 Christmas Tree.

The next morning, as Kris prepares a huge-ass, animal-centric breakfast.

Snuggle time with some pigs (this one's Fuzzy.)

Kyan and Susie. Sunday afternoon, Kris drove Crystal's kids back up to Clare, where they were to be picked up by their mom, and we started putting our house back together for the upcoming week of school and work.

I bought a star for the girls' playroom tree this year.  In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have gotten one that was so big, but. . . whatever.  'Tis the season.

- Brian