The Houghs' 200th Episode: Holiday Blast-Off

Happy African American Friday, y'all!

Black Friday has gotten out of control, and people are becoming nothing more than masses of greedy sheep after Thanksgiving.  Accordingly, we didn't participate at all this year.  We didn't buy a damn thing on Black Friday, and I won't bother wasting time talking about it now. 

So, today morale was low in the realm of the Houghs.  Puking kid lying around the house, half-decorated Christmas tree.  You know the drill.  Not fun.

Well, the morale dropped even further when I decided to hook up Alayna's Fisher Price iXL and upload some new Christmas music and more pictures.  I'll spare you the nerdish details of this six hour ordeal (as only those savvy in computer-speak would appreciate and/or understand what I'm talking about), but it involved utilizing two different computers, multiple AA batteries, and a hell of a lot of cords.  In the end, the music was uploaded, the pictures were added, I added two new games for her, but lost three of the originals... and now face the task of resyncing the damn thing again (probably next month, when we go up to Dad's in Michigan) when I have access to another PC (I can no longer install it on any computer I own, since the software was updated and now the sync process is impossible).

I love the iXL, but the sync process is absolute shit.

By the time I threw in the towel, it was practically time for Kris to go to work.  The Cannonball was still pretty sick, so she only took Abby with her this afternoon.  Having failed in my attempt to update her iXL, I let her use my laptop to watch some movies in her bedroom . . .

. . . when she wasn't puking, of course.

Anyway, after an afternoon and evening spent lounging around, drinking water, and watching Pixar, the kid started to actually feel better.  The Hough Family Thanksgiving Curse had apparently subsided, its damage done.

By the time Kris and Abby got back from Sunchild, she was actually up and running around and in good spirits again.  So much so, in fact, that we decided that we'd attempt to finish what we had started the night before: throwing up the damn Christmas Tree.

Check it out:

Once we decided to finish decorating the tree, I dragged Alayna out to Target and we picked up $20 worth of cheaper, non-breakable Christmas ornaments to hang along the lower half of the tree (where inquisitive fingers frequently roam).

Jingle Bells:  Durable, shakable, fun to rip off the tree

Alayna hanging up a Mickey ornament she got last year from Papa and Nana

My old school Grover ornament I painted when I was in elementary school.  Yes, is still hangs on my tree.  Because Grover is awesome.

Abby having a snack.

Believe it or not, that's a Christmas movie on in the background. . .

We got this set of tacky, pink glass ornaments from my folks one year as a joke gift. . . and they somehow turned into a HUGE favorite with the kids.  Go figure.

Candy canes.  They are crack for children.

Alayna figured the candy canes were best hung clustered.

The Cannonball checks out Kris' old Angel tree-topper - something that we've discussed replacing with a light-up star for the past, oh, seven years or so. . .

Ornament exchange - I got a six-piece set of wooden Gye Nyames .

. . . and I got Kris a Dunkin' Donuts ornament 'cause, well, the chick loves the hell out of that place.

Christmas Decorating - complete

In closing, behold this year's Hough Family Christmas Card.  Print it out, slap it on your fridge, and add a touch of sexy yule to your holiday season:

(You're welcome.)

- Brian

Abby's 1st Christmas (Observed)

Well, with Black Friday over with, despite the holiday season going into the final stretch, things have been relatively laid back and calm around here lately. As I told you folks before, we've been over and done with 95% of your holiday shopping for over a month, so with the exception of Black Friday and a few random items Kris picked up while braving the morning's madness, we haven't had to pick anything else up.



We're leaving for Michigan in three days. Once I get out of work on Wednesday, I'm going to head back to the house, we're going to do a once-over of the house making sure everything's locked up and shut off, and we're going to set out for northern Georgia where we've reserved a hotel room (my goal is to get there by 2am).


Seeing how our trip is a few days off and all, we've been preparing like crazy for the two days in a car with a toddler and an infant. I've created a few different custom DVDs for the girls in order to keep them occupied on the road, made up of all the old school, classic Christmas specials from back in the 80s. Old Disney cartoons, the Muppets, Sesame Street, etc. The usual. We're bringing a case full of movies for them, too - Disney movies, SpongeBob, Yo Gabba Gabba, Christmas classics, etc.



I'm being an optimist and am also throwing in the Indiana Jones and original Star Wars trilogies, as well as the Arrested Development series... but more likely than not I'm never going to get a chance of watching them.



Anyway, seeing how we're leaving in a few days for a slew of family Christmases, we opted to have our own, immediate family Christmas at home with the girls. Something low key that would prevent us from having to haul all of our presents for the girls all the way up to Michigan just to turn around and bring them all the way back.

That would've been stupid.

So we had the girls open up their stockings and their gifts from us. Abby probably didn't know anything was out of the ordinary when she got up in the morning, but Cannonball sure enough freaked out when she saw everything under the tree. Always cool to see kids have fun celebrating the true meaning of Christmas...




Kris and I, according to Hough tradition, exchanged this year's annual Christmas ornaments. Every year since we came back from Shittsville (a.k.a. Ghana), we've bought each other a Hallmark ornament for our tree. At first, this came from necessity, as we had no ornaments ourselves and were in need of building up a collection.

Now, as we've abolished our Charlie Brown Christmas tree to Hades and have upgraded to a fancy, taller tree, we're still in need of additional ornaments to fill in all the new space. This year, I got Kris a UNICEF ornament (fitting her personality), and she got me a Muppets ornament (fitting to my personality). Everybody wins.

I had no idea a two year old could take so long opening presents. We were sitting on the floor in front of that stupid tree for a solid two hours opening gifts.


As can be expected, the boxes the presents came from were as big a hit as the gifts themselves... and every time a gift was opened, it had to be played with and mauled until one of us tore it away from them and kept the gift-giving momentum going. This isn't a huge deal if one kid's doing it, and everybody else has stuff to open, but after awhile it all came down to two adults waiting on a two year old to open her next gift, while the 7 month old shoved copious amounts of wrapping paper in her mouth.


Abby didn't get a whole hell of a lot to open Christmas morning (observed) from us this year (no offense, kid). Like I said before, we put about 80% of the money we spent on her this year directly into her credit union savings account. Maybe not a 'fun' thing to do, but she's got all of Alayna's old crap lying around the house, and all she wants to do with anything anyway is shove it in her mouth and drool all over it.

Did I mention she's sitting upright now? Pretty sure I did. Anyway, she's sitting up now. Falls down a lot, and she's hit her head so much I'm pretty sure I can safely rule out medical or law school in this girl's future, but she is sitting up. Huzzah.


Alayna's main gift from us, that Fisher Price iXL thing I was talking to you about before (think iPad for toddlers), was a pretty big hit. It's a complex, little piece of hardware, but she seems to already have the jist (gist?) of it. She's been raised around cell phones, iPods, and the like, so she's probably more proficient than most when it comes to handheld electronics.

...I don't know if that's really, really cool or really, really lame.

Yulin',

- Brian

Attack of the Christmas Beast

Well gang, it's coming down to go-time. The Christmas season is upon us, and - if you're a department store or the Dollar General by our house - it has been since, oh, late August or so.


We here at the Houghs always try and hold back the Christmas Beast as long as we can, lest we get sick of Santas and Christmas Trees and all things Yule well ahead of December 25th. This year was no exception, but - and I take full responsibility for this - we caved a little early this year. Usually, we put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving (the day commonly referred to as 'African American Friday'), but this year we threw it up a week early.

'Cause we're suckers.

While I will take the majority of the blame for this early pounce on 'the season fo' pleasin',' I think Home Depot and my school should incur some, small degree of accountability. My school gives us a full week of vacation for Thanksgiving. That's right, a full week. This means that as the holiday fervor begins to rise to a boil, Yours Truly is sitting around a non-decorated house, feeling the Christmas Beast breathe down his neck. The last two years, I've put up the interior house decorations the week leading up to Thanksgiving, with the tree itself going up the following day. As was to be the plan this year, too.

Home Depot had other plans.

Now, since we've been married, Kris and I have had to get by with a 6 ft, artificial Christmas tree that we picked up at Family Dollar. We have to string the lights on ourselves, and every year it just looks like pure hell. Seriously.

Remember Charlie Brown's sad, little Christmas tree? Remember that.

Yup.

Anyway, every year I declare I'm going to acquire a new, pre-lit Christmas tree, and every year it doesn't happen. Either they're too expensive or else we can't find anything worth getting (as was the case last year). This year, though, we found an early Black Friday special at Home Depot - a multi-colored, 7 1/2 ft., full-sized, Aspen spruce. Lots of tips, lots of lights, and retailing for $200... but we got it for $120.

Seeing how we had this awesome tree sitting in a box in our living room, we said 'what the hell' and threw the damn thing up early. 'Tis the season. The Cannonball loved the whole process of putting up the tree, and we had our parents oh hand via Skype, so it was a good time. Of course, we had to set up the tree so that all the hard-to-break, crappy, cheap ornaments were towards the bottom of the tree, and in the kids' reach, while the over-priced, Hallmark ornaments were higher up and safe from inquisitive fingers

Now, while decorating and Yule-spreading is frowned on before Thanksgiving, gift-getting and holiday shoppitude is most certainly not. No, the Houghs start buying Christmas gifts in late October/early November... because we're really, really smart.

Who the hell waits until December to start buying gifts for people? Seriously?! Why face those throngs of morons and crowds of 'crap, I gotta find this!' shoppers in malls and department stores, when one can easily just sit at home and purchase gifts online via Amazon or Target or eBay or what-have-you?

This year, we started picking out things for our daughters via Amazon, and began whittling away at those gifts in October. As of now, we're 100% done with Christmas shopping for the girls. Completely. If there's anything left to pick up, it'll be an impulse buy Kris picks up on African American Friday (because, being completely insane, she's still insisting on going out and braving the hordes at 4am).

Alayna was, by far, the easier of the two kids to shop for. Abby's more or less getting the money we'd otherwise be spending on buying her more toys deposited directly into her savings account. She has all of Alayna's mountain of old toys to play with, and there's really nothing she needs from us.

The Cannonball, however, is getting to an age where the toys we buy for her need to be more complex and challenging. Since Kris and I are both teachers, we really push reading, writing, and drawing with her, so I put some research into the highest quality toys available on the market that could assist her in further developing her reading and writing skills (phonetics, grammar, composition, etc.).

What we decided to buy her this year for her main gift was the Fisher Price iXL Learning System. Think of it as an iPad for toddlers. You can download various software programs onto it, you can upload your own mp3 audio files, your own pictures, and custom design the interface to fit your kid's personality. It's an e-reader, a hand-held gaming system, and mp3 player, and a picture-viewer all-in-one. You can draw, practice writing, listen to jams, view pictures, play games, and read books using a stylus and touch-screen.

If it sounds like I'm trying to sell this thing, it's because I seriously think this is the coolest kid's toy I've ever seen. If you're interested in learning more, check it out yourself. I'd highly recommend it for your own kids if they're gentle with electronics (Alayna's uses Kris' iPod Touch all the time and is knows how to handle and use it).

In closing, we're going home to Michigan this year for Christmas, and are once again making the 1300-mile trek via Tactical Family Transport Vehicle (i.e. 'mini-van'). We'll keep you posted as we develop our plans regarding this most perilous of ventures.

Stay tuned.

- Brian