I have to apologize, I’m terrible at keeping this site updated!

Nick carving our turkeyNick and I are both doing well. At the end of December, we passed our 1-year mark for living here in Nashville. It’s hard to believe it’s already been a year.

We spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas here in Nashville, just the two of us. (Well the two of us, plus Gracie & Gidget — our dog & cat.)

Thanksgiving was nice. I cooked my first turkey. That was something I didn’t expect to do this early in my lifetime. I’d always assumed we’d just go to my parents or in-law’s house for holiday dinners and I’d get out of having to cook a turkey at least for a few years. But I wasn’t about to let us have a Thanksgiving without one at all. Lucky for me, I bought a Me with Thanksgiving dinner readyButterball turkey and they had all the turkey “bits” all in bags so I didn’t have much to do to clean it. (That was the part I was dreading, ha ha.)

But I made a stuffed turkey (successfully!), mashed potatoes and gravy, and corn.  I even made pumpkin and pecan pies!  (I used this recipe for chocolate bourbon pecan pie - I highly recommend it.  Yum!)

Our Christmas TreeChristmas was very quiet. We put up a small Christmas tree but didn’t put any ornaments on it (just lights and tinsel). It was a good thing too, because as I anticipated, our cat knocked it over multiple times.

Nick woke me up at 5 a.m. on Christmas morning to open gifts! I asked him if he’d never heard of the “7 a.m. rule”?! Apparently only my family had that (not being allowed out of bed any earlier than 7 a.m. on Christmas morning). Remind me to convince Nick of the 7 a.m. rule before we have kids…

Anyway, there were lots of lovely presents to open. Nick totally outdid me. He got me an 80 GB iPod Classic. I was so excited!

Skype video chat with my family on ChristmasLater in the day, we opened presents with my whole family via Skype video chat. I got to see my mom, dad, grandpa & Sally, grandma & Dan, and even my old dog, Kodi. It worked out pretty well and was the next best thing to actually being home for Christmas. (Thank goodness for technology.)

Anyway, I guess that’s all the family news for right now. I have a few more video clips from the wedding that I’ll hopefully have time to edit and upload soon. I’ll post them on the video page when they’re ready.

(Flickr) Our First DanceHi everyone! I finally have the new site up and running. (Yay!) So I’d like to welcome you to the new and improved NickAndMandi.com! Hopefully I can talk Nick into posting here too.

We will be keeping you updated on what’s going on in our newlywed life together on this site. I’m planning to post lots of photos for our friends and family as well.

We’re still waiting to get our photos back from our photographer (it takes a few weeks for post-processing) but I’ll be sure to post them as soon they’re ready! In the meantime, you’ll find links to the photos I do have in the sidebar to the right under “Photo Galleries”. Just click the link and the photo gallery will open in a new window. If you took photos at the wedding or reception and would like to share them with us, please e-mail me!

Also, we had a bit of a malfunction with our video camera, so if anyone took video please let me know. We would love a copy of any video clips you might have taken!

Finally, I just want to take a second to say thank you to everyone who came to the wedding. The day was truly flawless. It was so wonderful being surrounded by so many friends and family members. Thank you all for making our day so special.