birthday...... japanese style

for minda's birthday, well technically after birthday (the 13th), i took her out to nagoyas. it is a japanese resturant where you sit around a flattop grill and your own personal chef slices and dices food right in front of you (for you). it was awesome we got a chef named ricky. it was so awesome he was super funny and a great cook! this first picture is ricky making a volcano out of an onion, veggie oil, and a lighter.



this is ricky getting ready to toss a small piece of shrimp for us to catch in our mouths! minda caught the first piece, and i caught one when ricky backed up about 25 feet! it was craaaaaaazy!







afterwards, minda wanted a picture with ricky! and the first picture we took was better except his eyes were closed, buuuuuut this pic is still good! we loooove ricky he is our favorite japanese man!

some birthday fun

yay it was minda's birthday this past thursday the 12th. sorry i haven't been able to post in the past few days, my opportunities to make it to a scanner have been limited. anways i have been busy......for minda's b-day i drove out to her house and spent it with her family, we had homemade eggrolls for dinner (the best ever)!!! hand rolled and everything!! minda and i went out to guess where?............... walmart! so minda and i "tried on" some walmart hillbilly hunting shirts, yeah we are dorks! (i am not sure how she got hers to stay hanging on herself without hands.....)


minda and her little sister chloe also really, really like animal crackers.......


after eating dinner and minda's dad's famous homemade raspberry cheesecake we played the whitlock game of choice: hand and foot!

a primanti brothers sandwich in pittsburgh

the drive to pittsburgh was pretty good. i slept most of the drive so it went pretty quickly for me. it was/is a pretty gross day out, just plain: grey and gloomy....i spent most of the day at the hotel working on homework that is due after spring break, writing some e-mails, and just diddling around on the internet. dinner tonight was awesome, my dad and i got to go to the primanti brothers restaurant and get some awesome sandwiches! here is a picture of my dad with the menu, cause it has an awesome cover!


and the my sandwich came, it is not the best picture of the sandwich, but you get the idea! (also what was on the sandwich is on the polaroid, just click on it to enlarge!)

yay for mr. freeze

so mr. freeze our local ice cream shop opened a couple weeks ago so even though it was 37 degrees out, my family (excluding max) went out and got some ice cream courtesy of my awesome ma and da! the one picture is of minda loving up on garrett and him trying to ignore her by reading his book (catcher in the rye i believe). unfortunately you can't really see either of my parents.



as a side note my dad has a business trip to pittsburgh to go on for the next two days (tuesday and wednesday). he invited me to tag along and see the city a little bit! also we are going to get to go to the famous Primanti Brothers Restaurant, which is famous for their (go figure) Primanti Sandwich. I would tell you what was in the sandwich, but i will just wait til wednesday or thursday when i have a picture to show you!

there and back again a boyfriend's tale by nik walborn

so minda had to be at church this sunday morning not only for her church service, but for a worship leader's meeting, so we set off late last night (from my house) for the long drive back to her house so we could go to church the next morning. church was awesome, pastor Don talked about the 2nd coming of Christ and our responsibilities as Christians in this world. i enjoyed it very, very much. on the way back to my house we had to stop and get gas at one of the only places to get anything out where minda lives.........walmart. so we had to get a picture of me getting ready to pump gas into her family's car (well mini-van, but i don't like admitting that i drove one).

one day in and i finally started my spring break

so it took a day into my spring break, but minda jayne finally came over to my house so we could see each other. it had been around 2 months since we had seen each other so it was pretty emotion filled! we laughed, cried, and fought a little. it was pretty awesome. and glad to say i love her more now than any other time in my life. the following pictures are from our reunion.

the picture below with the green hat (it looks orange, but believe me it's green!) is an early birthday gift that i had to give to her. the hat is from Krochet Kids International, they: "employ women in Northern Uganda, Africa to crochet hats. These hand-crafted hats are shipped to the United States for people to purchase. The profits accumulated from the sale of these crocheted products and donations are used to empower suffering youth, families, and communities in Northern Uganda by providing basic nutritional needs, education, and further employment."



i am really excited about this upcoming weekend. we didn't get to see each other this past febuarary (3rd or 14th) our three year anniversary and the cheesy all-important hallmark valentines day, which brings me to the excitement of this weekend........well if i told you she might read this and find out, so you will have to wait til later this week to hear about it; and possibly see a polaroid of our date!!!

the pick-up and seeing my brothers again!

so after my last class of the day on friday (the first day of spring break) my parents were waiting for me in the visiting (15 minute) parking lot! i was really excited to come home and spend time with my family and my girl! like i said before my battery ran out on my cartridge that i was using so i bought a few new ones that expired in 2006 and had them sent to my house. the package ended up getting to my home before my parents left to come and get me so they brought one up for me to test and see if it worked. i was eager to test it out so i took my first picture from my new cartridges with my momma once i put all my stuff in the car and loaded the film!
the car ride was pretty cool......me and my mom talked on the way home, my dad (like usual) slept almost the entire way home. so anyways we got home and my brothers weren't home cause garrett (youngest brother) went to a junior high play with his girlfriend rosie, and max (middle brother) was driving them cause neither of them have their licenses yet. so when they got home i was pretty excited to see them, so i celebrated by making them pose for a picture.
btw: garrett is on the left, max on the right, and yes max blinks in every picture that is taken of him.

Battery Problems :( and Post Work-Out

sad day! so i was trying to take a picture of myself, my roommate, and John Conterez (our work-out buddy) after our intensive workout, well the battery in my film cartridge for my Polaroid is on the fritz and is (was) slowly dying. which means that my camera will flash and will start to spit out and develop my picture, but it starts to lack on the follow through as you can probably tell from the picture below.


out of the next five pictures that i took, i luckily got one good picture out of it, unfortunately i was the only one that made it into the picture. i am sitting on my couch in my dorm room with my valentine's day gift from my roommate behind me

p.s. i love penguins

Spring Break Polaroid Documentation!

for this spring break i really want to stay connected with my friends, but much more importantly i want to stay connected with all the cool guys and gurls from Mosaic! when Victor gave me the Polaroid camera, i instantly thought about the cool ways i could use it. the first thing that came to my mind is documenting my spring break with a picture every few days if not every day. anyways.... i hope that you guys will be checking up on my blog throughout the next couple weeks to see the shenanigans that me, minda(girlfriend), and my brothers will be up too.
in explanation of this picture, i was showing my new Polaroid camera to my friend Keoni and while trying to close it, he thought the shutter button was the button that shut the camera, needless to say i tried explaining to him before he hit the button that, the button on top is not how you close it, but o well.....

Save the Polaroid!

Like I said before i work with a student ministry called Mosaic. I work somewhat with photography with the youth group. Victor Saad the youth pastor, to say thanks bought me a Polaroid Spectra, and even had some film for me to start off with Thanks again Vic, you are the best! btw i have to scan in every picture i take with my Spectra so sorry that the edges are so washed out..

The night that I got it (Sunday night) I was trying to go to sleep and couldn't so I started surfing online and tried to find the best deals for the film for my camera. As some of you may not know exactly last year (February 2008) Polaroid announced that they were discontinuing the instant film for the Polaroid camera (very sad)!

The Impossible Project

Upon looking online I found a group of 12 men from the Netherlands (they call themselves The Impossible Project) that are trying to reinvent and reproduce Polaroid instant film! So check out this website and support them!!

Go figure and Mosaic Spring Break Updates

So it happened! I once again started a blog, only to follow through for a week or two and then let it fall off the face of the earth! O well, here I am....
This semester is going pretty swimmingly (i really just wanted to use the word swimmingly).
But really the best part of this semester is the ability to work along side the student ministry called Mosaic, which is located West of Chicago at the church, Christ Community Church.

Which brings me to my next order of business.
I will not be able to come to Mosaic for the next 2-3 Sundays because of the fact that my spring break is for the next 2 weeks! Because I am going to gone for this long I want to stay connected with them (you). Yes, you (Mosaic Student) better be reading this and enjoy what I will be writing! I might also put up a couple personal devotions for myself and for you (Mosaic Student) or anyone for that matter.
Talk to you soon!