just in case you were waiting for the official word on our travel status - we are home. of course, being home has it’s responsibilities, none of which are blogging the last 2 weeks of our road trip ;)
but faithful friends, i know that you’ve made the daily sacrifice to type “michaelandnellie.com/blog” into your beloved internet explorer 6.0 location bar, and diligently hover over the “comment” button thinking “will this be the day that i make my presence known, or will continue to be stingy with my blog love?” i know you want more, and i’m planning to give it to you.
so, while i catch up on work and process the rest of our pictures, i offer this sign of good faith…
with kim ( nellie’s sister ) in town, we’ve been exchanging a lot of our favorite youtube videos. here’s a few that have been played a few times more than once ;) enjoy!
this girl is awesome!
improv everywhere is amazing! these guys are the guys responsible for the hilarious annual “no pants” days on the subways of new york. of course, in light of the grief of got for posting a picture that said “i [heart] boobies,” i’m going to let ya’ll find that one yourself.
we love you, our friends near and far. we pray that the Lord would bless you richly in love, and that you would welcome his mentorship in the ways of the hearts all around you ;)
much love.
m + n
( image of friends harrison and lierin, getting married this year )
as we turned the corner to see the canadian border, it was like driving into a picture. the clouds opened softly, sharing a thin beam of warming light across the quiet ocean, as geese flew gracefully over head. no joke! can’t wait!
the pietsches were our family for just shy of a week. they are fantastic friends and unbelievable people! the first day that we were there, we had a delightful lunch over the topic of the perfect murder - which turned quickly into a recap of CSI episodes we’d seen. but i do not exaggerate when i say that we’ve had some of the most profound conversations of this trip with them.
here’s jeremy and trevor researching some very “important” demographics of portland ;)
and jeremy with the lovely stacy, in a picture that i couldn’t get enough of.
thanks you guys for showing us so much love and for really meeting our hearts. it was an inspiring and revealing week.
so, on our way into seattle nellie decided that we had just a bit too much room left in our mini-van home. so, we made a stop by the best of swedish furniture stores, IKEA. some of you may have been concerned but i assure you that the excess of space in our car is no longer a problem.
we got to seattle a little late but managed to meet the pietsches just in time for really fantastic free-form, featuring many of the first year students of mars hill graduate school.
i’d like to apologize to everyone that finds this little smiley as offensive as i do. i’m a big fan of the classic * semicolon, right-parenthesis * smiley variety. for some reason the people over at wordpress took it upon themselves to deem type-face emoticons insufficient. i rebel against that movement and assure you that this will be the last buggery yellow guy that shows up here. and yellow? why yellow? anyway…
made it to seattle ( more on that later ). super-stacey took us down to pike place today. these pictures are not associated with any other story but i think that they are truly beautiful and i couldn’t wait to share them. so, we’ll save the stories for later… enjoy ;)
in case anyone wondered what i look like frolicking on a bed in gray long johns, wonder no more! and check out that point!
today was wonderfully low-key. after waking up to the afternoon sun, we promptly left our hotel at a respectable 12:30 pm. we were fortunate enough to spend the afternoon with the super-fantastic walton family - bret, brandy, + the baby-on-the-way. from the stories that i’ve heard, bret and i were in-utero buddies. our parents are life-long friends and we did everything from t-ball to ninja turtle themed birthday parties together. bret, brandy ( + the baby ) took us to this sweet joint for lunch. ( if i can remember the name, i will post a link ). the story is that two brothers bought out a dilapidated school and turned it into a restaurant / theatre / pub / hotel. here’s some shots of the classroom-turned-theatre-lobby.
when asked what they would desire to wake up with tomorrow, bret said “supreme, natural athleticism… so that i could do back flips to the mailbox.” brandy’s was “more” realistic - “to have had this baby and be skinny again!” which, btw, brandy is an adorable expecting mother!
thanks you guys for such a great afternoon. can’t wait till next time!
