eight nickles: fun fun fun

Showing posts with label fun fun fun. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

justin's january

January 2010 has really belonged to Justin, and rightly so. This month he turned 19, had his farewell {post coming soon}, we went mini-golfing as a family before he leaves, tonight he'll be set apart as a missionary, and tomorrow he'll be entering the MTC. The month belongs to him!

Here are some photos & video clips from our family day at Trafalga yesterday:

Justy:

Gearing up for mini-golf:

Trafalga's indoor course is now a glow-in-the-dark, black light course. Pretty fancy.

Braden & Bryson putting, while Zander says, "Melissa, take a picture. I'm levitating this ball."

All in all it was a fun day. Braden, Suzie, and Melissa all got a hole-in-one on the 18th hole, so we won free tickets to the XD theater at Trafalga. Melissa gave her's to Justin so he could go with Suzie. She is SO nice. :)

We all played arcade games after golfing- pretty fun!

530 tickets! from Melissa Nickle on Vimeo.

"come on shake your body" from Melissa Nickle on Vimeo.

family fun @ trafalga from Melissa Nickle on Vimeo.

Monday, December 28, 2009

"through the years we all will be together"

CHRISTMAS EVE:
Every year for Christmas Eve, we do the same things. First, we go out to lunch. This year we went to Five Guys:

Then, we go to a movie. This year, we went to see Avatar. It was great! After the movie, we go home and have our Christmas Eve dinner, which includes things like candy, chips, bagel sandwhiches, cookies, etc. Just snacks and appetizers.

We then have our annual reading of "The Night Before Christmas."

As per usual, the dogs joined in on the family fun. Here are Dudley and Sammy, respectively, listening to storytime:

We then open two presents each - a pair of pajamas and slippers for everyone. After changing into our new pjs, we take a stairstep photo, which is to say, a photo showcasing everyone's current height, from tallest to shortest. The height differences used to be very prominent, but it's getting pretty darn close these days!

CHRISTMAS DAY:
Christmas morning is always fun. First, we get our presents from Santa:

We then have our traditional Christmas breakfast, Christmas Strauda, followed by opening our non-Santa presents. After that, we spend the rest of the afternoon as we please until it's time for Christmas dinner.

This year, Jonathan's dog, Bentley, joined us for Christmas Day. . .

. . . and I don't think Dudley was too pleased with the newcomer! Don't worry, they got used to each other throughout the course of day. :)

When late afternoon rolls around, we have our fancy Christmas Dinner. The turkey this year was scrumptious! Great job, Chef Melanie.

For dessert this year, Mom made a pumpkin pie with homemade whipped cream. But, we had a little bit of a problem when she realized that we left the handmixer up at the cabin over Thanksgiving. So, while we pulled out the stand-mixer, Dad was busy coming up with his own solution. He attached a whisk to his drill, and it actually worked! You can see the video at the end of the post. Mom, however, made every attempt to keep him from using it. She succeeded. :)

And finally, enjoy a few video clips from our fun family day:

i need you like a penny needs a wishing well from Melissa Nickle on Vimeo.

makeshift mixer from Melissa Nickle on Vimeo.

Untitled from Melissa Nickle on Vimeo.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

there's no place like home

Elder Nickle got home last Friday, and it was quite the eventful day! Let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start):

On the way to the airport- we were running a little late because my dad called to check the status of the flight and they were set to land 30 minutes early. So, we ... hastily... made our way to the airport.

We thought we might miss him! So we hustled inside and waited by baggage claim.
And waited.
And waited.

And waited.
I have about 20 "sneak attack" photos of Bryson while waiting. He was not amused.

Oh, don't worry, here we are still waiting.
Well, no Elder Nickle arrived! Some missionaries coming home from Vancouver did, though, in case you were wondering.

Turns out all the D.C. South missionaries missed their flight! They were late to check their bags by less than two minutes, and the airline made them switch flights, and pay $60 each. They were re-routed to Atlanta, but we were unaware of this fact until we had waited almost an hour holding the sign at the airport!

We had over four hours to kill, so first, we went to meet Jonathan's puppy at his place. Here's a little video of our drive there, we have fun. :)

And here's Dad with the 5 month old puppy, Bentley. So cute!

We still had a bunch of time to kill, so we went out to breakfast at Village Inn, which Braden and Justin admitted they had always thought was a motel. :)

Hmmm, still three hours to go? Let's go to the zoo!

We had tons of fun seeing all the animals. I LOVE this first photo of Mom & Dad.

Some of our favorites:

And now back to waiting at the airport. Does this photo look strangely familiar?

Oh, probably because this was Justin that very morning with the same look on his face.

When we got to the airport the second time, there were about six families waiting for D.C. South missionaries. That morning, we had been the only one.
One lady said to us, "So, what time did you get your call this morning? Our elder called us at 5 am!"
Our response, "You got a call?!"
You've got some explaining to do, Elder Nickle...

Here he is upon arrival...FINALLY!

The conversation as soon as Zander walked up:
Us: "Thanks for calling us!"
Zander: "I called you at 5 am and left a message, you didn't get it?"
Us: "No! We waited here this morning for an hour!"
Zander: {laughing}

Us: "Mom never checks the messages, and sometimes our phone doesn't ring when people call. Did you think it would be important to talk to someone in person?!"

Zander: "I'm sorry, I'm on so many painkillers for my hernia I just thought you knew." {more laughing}