Busy, Busy, Busy…

From Mike:

As usual, Kelly and I closed out 2010 and began 2011 with a myriad of fun social activities. Here’s a recap of events that occurred after my brother’s wedding last month:

Keeping with our Christmas tradition, we attended the Milburn’s annual Christmas Movie Marathon the weekend before Christmas. Although it’s been sad to see the attendance at the marathon slowly decline over the years, I never get tired of watching those holiday classics…with the exception of flops like Jingle All the Way. Sorry Ah-nold fans, he and Sinbad just don’t get it done in that one.

Of course, no Christmas season would be complete without our annual Ugly Christmas Sweater Party! Several out-of-town friends were home for the holidays, so the house was packed, but that didn’t stop the hideousness from enduring late into the night. Beth managed to take 1st prize in the “found” sweater category with a tasteful, yet busy little number that looked like it came straight out of a catalog of grandma’s creations. She was also sporting an oversized-Flava-Flav-esque-clock-ornament-medallion…thing. Emily took home 1st prize in the “created” sweater category by sticking what seemed like hundreds of holiday-related stickers to her outfit. Well done, ladies! Although I will forever believe that my sweater was, by far, the ugliest one at the party.

We celebrated Christmas Eve with the Murphys by getting brunch at Mimi’s Café, followed by a movie. We saw The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which was actually quite good! After attending our church’s Christmas Eve service, we returned home for a quiet evening. Christmas day was spent at my parent’s house. The whole family was there to eat breakfast, open gifts, and enjoy each other’s company. Overall, it was a wonderful, relaxing day.

On New Years Eve, we drove to the Highlands in Denver for dinner at the Coral Room with a few close friends, took a quick, icy walk to Three Dog’s Tavern down the street, where we spent the remainder of the evening. The Tavern turned out to be a perfect place to celebrate with drinks, pool, shuffleboard, a little Buck Hunter arcade action, and a midnight champagne toast!

New Years Day was spent in our usual fashion at my Cousin Deb’s house in Berthoud. We stuffed ourselves, played games, watched football, and relaxed for a few hours before calling it quits and heading home for a long, and much-needed, winter’s nap.

The following weekend, a bunch of us headed up to Frisco for a ski trip. We rented a huge 5-bedroom house for the weekend and thoroughly enjoyed every minute we were there; whether it was playing pool, ping-pong, watching movies, or soaking in the hot tub, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. On Saturday, people scattered all over Summit County to spend the day at their favorite ski resort. A few people stayed behind and went shopping and relaxed at the house. We all headed home on Sunday morning, but not before stopping in Idaho Springs for some delicious Beau Jo’s Pizza!

The following weekend we began attending a new church in Denver called Eikon. Our close friends, Alex and Katey started the church and asked Kelly and me to be part of their core group, intended to help get it off the ground. We gladly accepted the invitation and have enjoyed being a part of such an amazing group of people! We’re excited about what Eikon is doing, and invite all of you to visit the website and see what it’s all about: http://denver.eikoncommunity.org. We’d love for each and every one of you to join us!

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to take a beginner’s photography class in Boulder. We met at Chatauqua Park, and the instructor taught us the basics of how to utilize our camera’s shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and several other features to help us take our DSLR cameras off the “Auto” setting and onto the “Manual” setting. It was very informative and I’m excited to begin taking pictures and actually know what I’m doing, and how to utilize the often unused features of this expensive piece of equipment we own. :)

On Tuesday, we met up with Amy, Beth, Todd, and Carter at Civic Center Park for the Denver Big Air event. The event brought professional skiers from around the world to compete in a ski-jump contest in the middle of downtown Denver. It was incredible! They built a huge multi-story ski jump right in front of the City and County building in Denver and brought in snow makers to cover the jump and landing area. Switchfoot played during the event and at the end of the night, it started snowing. Even though I couldn’t feel my toes at the end, it was awesome!

So that’s what’s been happening at the Nishi household. I ask the Lord’s blessing on each of you and pray that your 2011 is off to a great start! Until next time, keep us in your prayers, as we will keep each of you in ours.