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not even hane’s prepared for this.

i’m doing a lot of digital spring cleaning. so, there will probably be a few more posts like this. i feel like i’m finally starting to emerge from the mountain of work that i left behind in january.

regardless, there have been a lot of fun experiences that i’ve wanted to document — the first of which was jordan’s bachelor party. i honestly don’t have much to say. weird things happen when you get a bunch of christian guys together and with a stripper off the menu, some of the guys got a little… restless.

folk ‘n roll

i was hangin’ out at my brother ryan’s house a few weeks ago — assisting his acclimation to the mac platform. his previous computer died on him and, by some bizarre occurrence, could neither hold a full charge or stay on while plugged in. so, in order to port over his boundless libraries of music we had to let it charge for an hour, transfer as much as we could before the battery crashed and start the process again. sounds silly but it actually took us about 6 hours.

anyway, after we ran out of DVR’d family guy episodes to watch, we decided to visit giacoletti music — the shop where we took music lessons as kids. we saw some old teachers, shook hands, recalled old times, the whole nine yards. of course, what we hadn’t expected, after 12 years of not visiting, was inherent power that our instrument-lust still had over us — as up in the corner were a couple of brand new, never been played, freshly strung, mandolins.

of course, after about 5 minutes of staring in silence i asked the inevitable question.

“what d’ya say we take these mando’s off their hands?”
“i don’t know. which one do you like?” ryan platonically retorted.
“yellow, you?”
“red… you got cash?”
“no.”
“…”
“…”
“let’s do it.” he said, sounding defeated by the inevitability of his costly decision.

to make a long story shorter, my brother is the man and straight up bought me the mandolin - one of the radest gifts i’ve ever received. accompanying mine, he purchased his mando AND a ukelele ( long story ).

it set him back a bit, but it made the rest of the uploading sesh fly by!

thanks for a great fun afternoon bro ( and a kick-a mando! ).

it’s finally here!

this is among the innumerable reasons that i love google — their tenacious will to improve upon the way that you do just about everything!

i’m not at all surprised that google would be the first to bring the flux capacitor to market and in such a useful way — why time-travel yourself when gmail can do the legwork for you? i’m sure we’ll get a lot of milage out of gmail custom time.

“I REPEAT : do NOT drink the coffee! more instructions to follow — FUTURE DWIGHT”

happy april 1st - don’t get fooled

happy easter! ( belated )

if you can make it next year, i suggest you all come by our house for easter morning. if you haven’t seen four grown men on an easter egg hunt, it’s more of an easter egg beatdown. next year i’ll have to youtube some of the action for you.

this year zack helped ’stuff’ the eggs. he conveniently placed quarters, movie tickets, and other high-ticket items, in eggs he would remember by color. this is him laughing as we repetitively opened those filled with 14 pennies.

and ryan about to unleash the the furry of his make-shift jellybean launcher ( constructed solely of items found in his easter basket ) and the inevitable 2008 easter sugar crash.

after the nap, we got coffee’d up and ready for round two at the winters’ house!

ummm, you tell me…







elliott had a well developed ‘team’ approach, where he harvested the eggs and the other collected. the strategy seemed to work.

of course, you can’t leave temecula without stoppin’ by pinkberry.

we finished the evening off with a fantastic dinner at the kraatz’ house and rocked yet another hunt! i’m not sure what uncovering eggs has to do with the resurrection of Jesus but we had no shortage of celebrating today!

Happy Easter!

things start goin’ south : day 23-25

‘what,’ you might ask, could be so engaging, so magnetic, so exhilarating, that it would bring us off course to the curiously quaint city of redding?

… the RED ROBIN of course! well, that and a persuasive blonde that offered us cookies.

things start goin’ south : day 21-22

the last 2 days were absolutely stunning! with only a handful of things that we really wanted to see on the oregon coast, we to decided to book it down highway 1 and spend some more time in san francisco!

first thing on the docket was to check out this really cool shipwreck. truth be told, i have no idea which of the oregon shipwrecks it was. if one of you wikipedia buffs want to figure it out, i’m sure that someone would be glad that you did. ;)



you can still see the skeletal outline of the entire ship. it was a bit creepy.



traveling through some farm country and lovin’ me some big empty silo action.



yes, that’s a 2!



if you’re traveling on the 1, let me give you a friendly piece of advice. they take the speed limit vary seriously. because towns just magically appear every 20 miles, the speed limit will drop by 30 mph without you realizing it, and they’re quick to enforce it. as we noted before, people from oregon are some of the nicest we’ve meet. now, nellie’s has charmed her way out of a number of tickets but blowin’ through a 35 zone at 65 requires a lot more than good looks and quick wit. ( of which she undoubtedly has both ;) ).



the next day we stopped by to see paul bunion and his magical blue ox. this was a ‘mind-blowing’ experience…



of course. what babe lacked in brain, he made up elsewhere.



most thrilling $4 bucks i ever spent. i’m tempted to call six flags and tell them they wasted their money.



arcata is one of those places i’ll probably drive on by next time i’m really desperate for a tank of gas.



yesterday we spent 11+ hours in the car. i’m not excited to do that again but the scenery was well worth it!

things start goin’ south : day 20

with a car full of shattered glass and a snow entrenched botanical garden on the docket, we decided that it was time to make our way back across the border. so, we made the 2 hour trek home, in the rain + snow, without a window. the worst part is that we didn’t even get a picture of it!
however, despite all of this turmoil, God is faithful. we had friends that we had desperately wanted to visit in mt. vernon, and they were gracious enough to let us intrude a day early. not only that, but they had a replacement window all lined up and ready to go by the time that we got there, put us up for the night, and treated us to some FABULOUS gorgonzola topped pizza!

we were so blessed to have a couple days with the maas family. daryl and christianna have a beautiful son, johann, and a baby girl on the way.

i love taking pictures of little kids. here are a few of johann.







johann is one of the cutest kids in the world. he’s engaging. we all had a good laugh when we asked him how old he was. he very confidently responded ‘big’. ‘why, yes you are big,’ we responded ‘but how many years old are you?’ and being the young existentialist that he is, very assuredly, answered ‘johann’.



when asked ‘the question,’ daryl wished that he had the ability to fly, christianna desired to be completely immersed in the love and power of the Holy Spirit, and johann seemed pretty content just to be him ( thought we’re pretty sure ‘bob the builder’ would have been a close second ).

daryl, christiana, and johann, thank you for making us feel so welcome and ‘at home’ with you. we hope to have the opportunity to treat you with as much hospitality as you have shown us. of course, under more pleasant circumstances ;)

we’re home!

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.


happy valentine’s day



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 )

goin’ north : day 18-19

move to canada for…

the TV programming.



the ginormous pot pie.



the wicked cool street traffic symbols.



ALDO outlets.



awesome american cars.



the vagrants.



overpriced attractions



rides from cartoons so old you’d have to watch canadian television to know who the characters are.



because they use the word “nudies.”



“handsy” big-birds and play sets with painted shadows.



boredom so deep that you stand on rocks for fun.



and rampant vandalism!



yah, we loved it so much that we left our non-refundable hotel a night early. yeah canada!