The Nicholsons...chapter 2

Ok, so I have not blogged in quite a while, partly because we have been really busy, and partly because I didn't feel too inspired to blog, but the time has come again. To sum up what has happened since my last post, I have accepted a job with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studying a parasitic disease and Chris has started to form a nonprofit organization bringing college students to third world countries to do mission internships using their majors. We feel so strongly that God has lead us to the place we are right now, and looking back, we are overwhelmed at the pieces God has put into place which bring us to this day, the day we go to Kisumu, Kenya! On our first trip, we will be spending a total of six weeks there. The first ten days will consist of Chris, myself, Greg and Suzy Williams, and Cindy, Roger, and Eli Kahn taking a sort of survey around Kenya. We land in Nairobi, spend a day there with the Conway family, and head to Eldoret. We will spend a day in Chepkong'ony, the school where both Chris and my brother Daniel each spent a year working with the kids and teaching some classes. I am really looking forward to finally seeing this place and more importantly the people I have heard so much about. Then it is on to Kisumu, where we will spend three days looking at hospitals, housing, cars, groceries, etc., to understand what it looks like to live in this place. We will also get to spend time with our friends the Davis's while we are in Kisumu. Finally, we head to Nakuru for a quick safari and back to Nairobi to see off our friends while Chris and I head back to Kisumu for another 5 weeks. I will be working in the lab full-time and Chris will be working with an orphan day school and a medical clinic located in the slums of Kisumu.

The intention of this trip is to make preparations for us to move to Kisumu in December 2011. Our hearts are full of the love that has been poured out by our friends and family, and our souls are eagerly looking to the Holy Spirit to guide our steps along the way. Leaving the people we love (and our sweet dog:) is by far the hardest part of this step of faith. We hope to keep in touch as much as possible with all of you over the next six weeks. I will be posting updates to our blog so you can be on this journey with us!

Girl's Weekend 2010

So after the concert, Sarah, Chris, and I headed back to the ATL, and the next morning we went to one of my favorite spots for breakfast, Rise n Dine. For the record, Sarah coming home with us was a last minute decision, and the house was a MESS!! I'm still working on not stressing about stuff like that, but of course, Sarah said it wasn't bad at all:)

After breakfast, Sarah and I headed to Memphis to meet up with Lindsay Trotter, Kim Tomlinson, and Melissa Higgins. On the road trip I tasted my first cowtail, and it was AWESOME! Of course, we couldn't find them anywhere else after that.

We had such a great weekend- I love these girls so much, and it feeds my soul to spend time with them! Saturday, we ate a big breakfast, took showers, ate crepes for lunch, shopped, had some ice cream, shopped some more, cooked pasta for dinner, and went to the melting pot for dessert. Do you see a theme here? What can I say, we love to eat, and we are REALLY good at it :) We laughed a lot, too, which hopefully burned off some of those calories.

After church on sunday we got our nails done and relaxed at Kim's house. We made pizza for dinner that night and Kim made her famous "Little dude" cookies. This is a recipe she made up herself when she was little and it is really good. I hated saying goodbye to my friends- I love you girls!

Brad Paisley Again!!!

I know I know, we've already been to see Brad Paisley once, but he is so good and I LOVE to see him in concert. Last time Taylor Swift was the opening act... she wasn't even the second act... she was the first!!! It's so crazy to think about how HUGE she is now. I'm glad I got to see her in concert then, cuz tickets to see her are pretty high now I'm sure. Anyway, the openers this time were Justin Moore and Miranda Lambert. Pretty cool, because I love Miranda Lambert. Her song, "I've Given Up On Love, 'Cause Love's Given Up On Me" was my theme song senior year of college. It was very traumatic to leave Harding without a ring on my finger or even any prospects, sigh, yes, love had given up on me (please, I had never even had a relationship for more than two months... can we say that I have my dramatic moments:)

We drove to Greenville, SC to see the concert with Ryan and Sarah Lassiter. We love spending time with great friends like them! We also love people watching at a concert that brings out the country crowd (no Obama shirts, please, Chris:) All in all, it was a great concert and tons of fun. BP always does really cool stuff with graphics for his shows and he is and AMAZING guitarist. Two interesting moments of the night:

One, he sings a song about heaven, and showed all the famous people that had died this year. Who was missing from the slideshow? MJ! Far and away the most famous person we lost this year.... hmmmm

Another song he sings called "Welcome to the Future" about how far we have come. Last verse talks about civil rights and mentions a woman on a bus and a man with a dream... the graphics behind him had been showing pictures of everything mentioned in the lyrics, but at this point, no Rosa Parks, no MLK, and DEFINITELY no Obama.

Sigh, I guess you just got to know you're audience. Anyway, I sure am proud that our country won't keep a man from being president because of his color.

Our New Puppy

Here is our new puppy... Did we really need a new puppy? No, but how can you say no to that face? She is half lab half plott hound... going to be a big girl!



Here is our annoyed puppy. Emory wears her emotions on her sleeve, so she let us know very quickly that she did not approve of the new addition. (Please ignore Chris in his boxers, as a general rule he doesn't wear pants in the house, so no surprise visits please:)



In Emory's defense, we made the puppy stay in her crate because she didn't cry when she was with Emory, when we came home from church the puppy had peed all over Emory's crate! I would probably be grumpy too.





Don't worry, we didn't really get a new puppy, we just fostered her for one night (this was Chris's idea and I informed him that I couldn't do it again... I felt like such a horrible person giving her back). Let's hope that she found a really great home, and for now our diarrhea dog is keeping our hands full :)

It just occurred to me that two posts ago I entitled "Snow Day" which is ironic because there was hardly ANY SNOW AT ALL that day, and the following post was about Salt Lake City where the snow was up to our waist but everyone went about there business as usual... the joys of living in the South.

Salt Lake City

So Chris has to go to Salt Lake CIty every other month or so for work, and this last time I got to go with him! It was soooo fun. We haven't really taken a big vacation since our honeymoon (I don't know if this really counts since Chris had to work during the day, but it was great fun for me :). It just so happened that we were there during the Sundance Film Festival, and Chris's boss's wife was able to get us into one of the movies called Happythankyoumoreplease. The director who was also the main character came out afterwards to answer questions about the film. It was really fun and then we ate dinner with Chris's boss and his wife afterwards... a very fun night. It was so fun to see all the snow, and one day we went sledding on some big intertubes. The pictures show us being pulled up the hill by a tow rope.

Snow Day!!!

Today, all of Atlanta shut down due to ice and wintery conditions, so I finally have some time to put up pictures from Christmas. We had a wonderful Christmas together, Chris and I. On Christmas eve we went to the candlelight service at church, which Chris did a wonderful job planning. After we got home we had fondue, my favorite meal ever! Christmas morning we slept in, lounged around, and hung out in the kitchen together while we both worked on preparing our Christmas dinner. You can see the menu for the day written on our kitchen chalk board. We had to eat in shifts because I couldn't fit all those 13x9 pans in the oven at once, but it was still great. A few glitches in our meal: accidentally bought healthy choice cream of chicken soup for the poppy seed chicken casserole- DON'T DO THIS, i also forgot the poppy seeds. One highlight from the meal- I added strawberries to the apple crisp which was very delicious. For Christmas dinner we had our friends Dominique, Roseanne, and Cody eating with us. In the afternoon we just played cards and other games and let our food digest. We were blessed with wonderful company on Christmas day.

6th grade girl sleepover

Last weekend I took on a very ambitious endeavor. Thankfully, I wasn't alone, my friends Rachel Roe and Melea Connett helped me host 9 sixth grade girls for a sleepover. To sum up the night, squeals, giggles, and LOTS of silliness. We played games, ate pizza, watched movies, and decorated cupcakes to bring to the firehouse down the road. Me, Rachel, and Melea went to bed around midnight, and I think the girls stayed up till 4. They fell asleep and set their alarms for 30 minutes later because they did not want to waste valuable time on sleep, but unfortunately they slept through their alarm and got a whole 3 hours of sleep. I was very impressed because I got them all to church on time and only one item was left at my house!

Thanks to Chris for a TON of help cleaning up the house. This was the beginning of a week of hotel Chez Nicholson. Thursday and Friday night I had a friend, Carolyn, stay over at our house, while she was there on Friday night our friends Stefan and Ivana arrived (they are from Serbia but have been living in Ohio for 3 months). We had so much fun with them this weekend. We miss them a lot and they made Serbian pancakes for us which were AWESOME. On Friday night my wonderful sister, Anna, her husband, Don, and three boys, Jon David, Luke, and Caleb, are coming to spend the night with us. We love to have people over and it feels good to put our house to good use. If you are coming to atlanta and need a place to stay, you are welcome at our house, but prepare yourself, there is only one bathroom and it is about the size of port-o-potty!