Family Portrait Session

Collier works his magic while posing the girls.

'Sup, Fam.

As some of you guys know, we Houghs didn't send out Christmas Cards last year. Totally dropped the ball. It's not like we didn't want to, mind you, but rather we never worked out how to get decent family pictures done in our hectic schedule in the months leading up to the Holidays. And we didn't have anyone to take them.

In previous years, our friend Collier - a freelance wedding photographer - takes portraits of all the families in our extended friend group. We, like the other families involved, end up using pictures from these sessions for our annual Christmas Cards. Alas, he was otherwise occupied last year with his wedding photography crap, but this year - thank God - he was able to once again schedule a random Sunday and assign people 20-minute slots for family photos.

So, for twenty minutes this afternoon, over at Midland City Forest this time around, he took pics of me, Kris and the girls. Weather was a little overcast but otherwise good, and for a small donation of $50 he took a bunch of pictures, touched them in Adobe Lightroom, and kicked 'em back to us in a week or two.

Not a bad deal at all, folks. And now this year, once again, you will all be receiving some flashy, new Christmas Cards. So, you know. . . keep an eye out on that ol' mailbox.

Here's a few from today's session, folks - enjoy.

The Houghs, ca. 2023.

Standing in the middle of a trail, for no reason. Like we always do.

Collier's a big fan of taking 'candid' pictures of families walking in a line towards him. He says 'just talk to each other and walk towards me,' and we end up with pics like this.

The Hough Girls.

(This one seems more accurate.)

We had to coerce them into actually touching one another for these pics - they usually shove each other off.

Abby

The Cannonball

And one of us, sans kids.

On our walk back towards the parking lot - the Larsons were next on his schedule - Collier spotted this rickety, wooden fence at the top of the ol' sledding hill and had us pose behind it.

And finally, for whatever reason, our kids requested Ryan take a picture of them at the top of the sledding hill, shaking hands.  I have no idea why - kids are weird - but Collier obliged.

- Brian

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

Merry Christmas Eve, America.

Arguably one of my favorite days of the year, Christmas Eve in the Hough house has, over the years, taken on the mantle of being the pinnacle of the Holiday Season.  Maybe not for the kids, of course, since opening gifts as a kid is a pretty tough act to beat.   

Prepping the turkey for the oven, around 9am.

Anyway, this year, once again, we hosted Kris' Laginess branch of the family - sans gift exchanging - and ran through a laundry-list of usual Christmas Eve requirements.  Cooking a turkey, opening some Christmas Eve gifts, watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation while putting out all the presents after the girls went to bed, etc.  This year did see a few previous traditions fall by the wayside, since the girls are getting older - namely putting out cookies for Santa and reading The Night Before Christmas.  It was only a matter of time before the kids outgrew those ones.

So yeah - I'll leave you now with a large assortment of pictures and videos to browse through, documenting the Houghs' 2021 Christmas Eve.  

Enjoy. . . 

We woke up to a White Christmas Eve, which was pretty cool. . . too bad it melted throughout the day, leaving us once again without a White Christmas.

Once the turkey was in the oven, we set the girls to work picking up the house in order to prepare for company that would be rolling in around lunchtime.  In the meantime, Kris and I drove some furniture up to Clare for Kris' mom, and to also pick her up to bring back with us.

Victoria - Kris' cousin Crystal's oldest kid - wouldn't be able to make it out this year, as she had just given birth to a boy the previous evening.  We deemed this excuse valid.

Around lunchtime, the turkey was finally done - turned out really good this year (thank God.)  I went with the Michigander recipe, which is always a homerun.

This process usually takes a bit, but this year we ended up freezing a bunch of it for future use, as well as putting some aside for use in a soup I was planning on doing in a couple days.

Assembling some gingerbread houses with Grandma Jordan.

These dogs have zero shame.

Reading manga on her chromebook instead of hanging around family.  We've hit those years.

I was disappointed I couldn't get my hands on Southern Tier's 2XMas (my favorite Holiday beer) or any of their other seasonal imperial stouts this year - frickin' Covid has disrupted the beer industry too, surprise surprise - but I did find this imperial ale that was just as festive (and delicious.)

Coaxed back into the dining room to socialize with family.

Taking a card break in the Study

(Not sure what they're looking at here. . .)

We ran out of room for our Christmas cards this year, so we couldn't put them all up.   Next year we're going to have to come up with a better solution, for sure.

Way too much food, as usual.

Yes, colored vinyl makes it sound better.  Shut up.

Grandkids and granddogs.

Got this texted to me by my old college roommate (and Virgil Q bandmate), Zack Learman.  Good to see his sense of humor hasn't changed in the last 20 years. . .

Abby's gingerbread house.

Drawing.  This girl is always drawing.

Another masterpiece from Zack.  That may be the most disgusting pizza I've ever seen. . . even without the dog.

Twinsies.  Marcy and Mickey.

Hens, clucking.

Alayna and Kyan (Crystal's youngest.)

Watching Kyan play videogames in the living room (he brought along his XBox so he had something to do - smart move.)

Kris' family always wants a portrait done whenever they're together, so I had to test out the lighting and timer settings on my SLR in the Study. 

Mickey, her husband Dennis, Marcy, Alayna, Kyan, Abby, Kris, and a handsome photographer.

These two gingerbread houses completely sum up the personalities of my two children.  One does the bare minimum but handles it was competence, while the other goes 110% with effort but creates a hot mess in the process.

Around dinner time (not that we had an official sit-down meal or anything, folks just grazed all afternoon), the rest of the Laginess clan departed and we let the girls open their Christmas Eve presents. . .

Pajamas, as usual.

Alayna's shirt was some chick from an anime she watches (Kris didn't realize it at the time, she just grabbed it because it had Japanese writing on it.)

Kris grabbed me some pajamas, too.

Can't go wrong with The Simpsons, folks.

Attempting to get a sibling pic in front of the Christmas Tree (you can tell Alayna is a big fan of physical contact with her sister.)

Pajama pic, featuring Dad.

We decided after gifts to attempt a family picture, something we've done the last seven or eight Christmas Eves.  Abby photobombed the SLR while I was setting up the timer.

Posing with egg nog.

(This one's pretty accurate.)

The girls went to be around 9pm, but didn't fall asleep for hours afterwards due to the anticipation for the coming morning (no shocker, there.)  Still, they're pretty good about staying in their rooms until 6am Christmas morning, so Kris and I threw in this celebrated Holiday classic and started bringing up all the presents to place out under the tree.

Stuffing stockings.

Watson, mid-leap, moves in to check out the stockings.

An hour or so later, finished with setting out gifts, arranging them in order of how we wanted the girls to tear through them, and placing bows on everything.

Hallelujah. 

Time for a Merry Irishman. . .

And that, dear readers, is the end to this year's Christmas Eve in the Hough house.

All systems go for tomorrow morning.  Six hours and counting. . .

- Brian