Halloween Warm-Up Weekend, Pt. II

The Sheraton Vistana Villages

Welcome back.

Dad and Cindy are in town for the weekend, doing their annual Halloween visit, and are once again staying at the Sheraton Vistana Villages.  Unfortunately their plane got in too late for them to check out the girls' costume parade, but once they settled into their room and ran a few errands, they swung by the house and hung out for a bit before taking the girls back over to their room.

Yes, once again, Kris and I pounced at the opportunity to offload our offspring on doting grandparents.

After Kris got off of work we drove over to their resort for some. . . well, some really, really weird storytelling.

Check it out:

Dad asked the front desk for an additional bed (since sleeping with our kids in a bed is absolute murder.)  This is what they dropped off for him.

Checking under the bed for monsters. . .

The monster they're looking for is this dude.  Friendly Fred.  That imperial stout, by the way, was awesome.

Friendly Fred - a friendly monster - comes courtesy of the Sheraton to guests' rooms, accompanied by a 'handler,' of sorts, who reads a not-so-spooky Halloween story to little kids.  I can't speak for anyone else, but the notion of a giant monster walking into a small hotel room to hang out with a couple skittish pre-schoolers had me skeptical. . . 

Friendly Fred makes his dramatic entrance.

Thank God I had beer for this.

The creepiest thing about Fred was that homeboy didn't talk.  At.  All.  Nothing creepier than a giant, seven-foot-tall monster sitting silently on a couch in a confined space. . .

After the story, Fred and his handler gave our kids halloween bags full of candy and toys - like, more candy than they generally gather trick-or-treating.

Abby never quite warmed up to him, but Alayna routinely caressed Fred's 'arm' fur' throughout the story.  Which, I'm sure, was really annoying to the guy inside who was forced to stay in character.

Pictures with Fred and his handler (who was inexplicably wearing a pajama onesie.)

It's a fitting look for her.

Snuggles, Abby and Alayna prepare for a sleepover with Papa and Nana, who bought them a firefly book and lantern set that was a pretty big hit.

Stay tuned for more Halloween shenanigans, America. . .

- Brian

Hoth

I'm sure the majority of the continental United States will despise me for saying this, but I'm going to say it anyway:

Tom Terry. Just in case you were curious.

 Florida sure has been cold these last few days.

Seriously.  I'm no Chief Meteorologist Tom Terry or anything, but I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to be this cold in the sub-tropics.  Call me crazy.  It has been consistently dipping below freezing these last few nights, and, to me, that's just plain balderdash.

Apparently there's this Polar Vortex thing to blame.  Again, having no background in weatherology, I'm not about to start describing this bizarre phenomenon for you - I highly suggest you research yourself on a credible website somewhere if you're that interested in it.  Here's a picture, though, for you lazy people out there:

The land-wiener poking out from underneath Blizzard Rape 2014?  That's where I live.

Looks like pure crap, right?  Sure it does.  I can't imagine it's very fun to live in North Dakota right now.

Don't care.

With all this snow and crappy weather across the country, I've been trying to avoid social media lately.  Whenever I log into Facebook my feed (or wall, or whatever the hell it's called now - I'm a little behind on the times) is nothing but people posting screenshots of their AccuWeather apps from their smartphones, gripes about how many inches of snow is in their driveway, and school cancellations that don't affect me in the slightest.

My school?  Yeah, we didn't get a snow day.  So screw you, Midwest.

I didn't move down here for this. . .

When it's this cold out, all a Floridian can do is stay indoors.  Walking the dog requires socks and shoes, and I'm not cool with that (I'm a flip-flop sorta gentleman, myself) - I don't like putting on layers unless I'm venturing out into snow.  Palm trees and winter jackets don't equate in my book, so anytime I'm forced to bundle up while mowing the lawn, I get sort of - well - pissed.

That means that, outside of work and school, the Houghs are more or less shut-ins.  Family time consists of huddling together for warmth, sleeping inside the guts of taun-tauns, and otherwise complaining about the 50-degree weather.  The upside to this cold snap is that takes place during the greatest time of the year:  Imperial Stout Season.

This is what God probably drinks.

One of my favorites. . .

Granted, one can find imperial stouts anytime throughout the year, but the seasonal imperial stouts come out in the winter months, when the cold weather requires one's beer to warm their insides with black-tar booze.

Chocolate stouts, coffee stouts, spiced stouts - all thick as sludge and strong as Zeus' man-parts.  Imperial stouts are my favorite style of beer, and I try to take advantage of these crappy winter months and stock up on the Nectar of the Gods while I can. . . 'cause eventually winter fades into over-rated Spring and all the run-of-the-mill IPAs start rolling out.  Which, to me, all tastes the same after awhile.

Do to the routine schedule and crappy weather lately, not much has happened around here. . . but here's a couple pics for you anyway ('cause I'm nice):

While the men of the house seize some siestas, the girls roast real marshmallows over a fake campfire (in reality, this doesn't work - don't waste your time, folks.) 

Our kids are easily entertained.

After years of storing it in its case in the closet, I finally hung up my Michael Kelly F-Style Mandolin over my turntable.  I positioned it off-center as I want to eventually pick up a requinto guitar to hang alongside it. . .

Introducing the girls to Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind - one of my favorite movies and definitely one of the best animated movies ever made.  I just picked it up on Blu Ray and the kids were into it (at least for the first half of the movie. . . they have short attention spans.)

Reading Frozen books in bed.  Alayna can easily read the Step-Into-Reading Level 2 books, so we'll have to push her up to the Level 3 books soon.  Abby enjoys flipping along to the book-on-CD  books (we used to use cassettes back in the day, but hey. . . whatever.)  Frozen, by the way, is to little girls what crack is to the mayor of Toronto.

Watson, in his natural state.

Anyway, while the cold wind bloweth, and the black stouts floweth, we Houghs will continue to soldier on through the perilous mid-30s lows/high-50s highs days with the resilience and determination that one has come to expect from our family name.

The holidays are over, the adventures overseas have come to a close, and everyone's going back to work and school and subsequently freezing their pants off.

Let's do this, winter.

- Brian

Cowabunga.