Back to Little D

Recently, I was able to make a short trip back to Denton. Our friends, the DeRoche's were awesome to pick me up at the airport and let me stay at their house! As we left DFW and started driving into town, I started to feel really homesick. Wow, I hadn't realized how much I missed this town! What's the first thing we did? Get some BBQ and Dr. Pepper from Sonic! Actually, I hit up Sonic almost every day I was there. I had such a good time seeing many of my closest friends!! So, this trip prompted me to start recording some of the differences between Texas and Maryland...

First of all, in Texas, people are just plain friendlier. People hold doors open for you and are not as horn happy while driving. In Maryland, I've left the grocery store nearly in tears more than once and it wasn't because of the prices! These people need some Jesus.

Dr. Pepper is more readily available in Texas. It is the home of Dr. Pepper. I mean some McDonald's don't even offer Dr. Pepper. Isn't that unamerican? Is that a word? Also, Sonic is nowhere to be seen around here...so I guess they figured if we don't sell Dr. Pepper, why have a Sonic? Maryland is also lacking in the area of good Mexican food and BBQ. It's just different here. Although, the seafood is amazing! You can't go to any event without having a crab dip of some sort.

Next, we do not have a Walmart in Annapolis. I believe that's a point in favor of Maryland! Can you believe I haven't stepped inside a Walmart in nearly six months? And if not having a Walmart wasn't crazy enough, I've never seen so many gas stations without gas. Why would you have a 7-Eleven that doesn't have any gas pumps? If you're driving through this area and you need gas, don't look up nearby gas stations on your gps because chances are they won't even have any gas. I guess we're fond of the convenience store here. One convenience store that I had never heard of before moving here is Wawa. Supposedly it's a big deal. Our house backs up to a Wawa, but they don't have a single gas pump either. Pretty good shakes though!

So, say you are driving through Maryland...you better fill up before you leave! Unlike your drive through most of Texas, you're not going to see tons of gas stations, restaurants, hotels, retail stores, etc. Driving down Maryland highways you will see tons of beautiful trees! And you really can't drive anywhere around here without going over water. Sailboats are everywhere. I guess we are in the sailing capital of America! Another thing you will not see while driving anywhere in Maryland is a million huge pick-up trucks. High-end cars are in abundance here. You practically have to have a brand new BMW to pass a Maryland car inspection. I'm not bitter at all.

Well, now that I have rambled on for so long, I will have to save the rest of my thoughts on Texas v. Maryland until another entry. Why are my blogs so long?

July in Review

July has proven to be our busiest month yet! We started off with a fun Fourth of July weekend. When it comes to holidays, we are a bit homesick for old friends and past traditions. But I must say, watching fireworks over the Chesapeake Bay sure beats Fouts Field. After church on the Fourth, we went to a party where we were surrounded by some of our new friends from our church family. We all had a great time, especially Emorie who we had to pull out of the pool when her lips turned blue. She had been swimming for 3 hours straight!


West Virginia

A few days later, Thursday, we headed to Lewisburg, West Virginia to visit my family. We had a couple of relaxing days in the mountains, but were sad to find out that this would not only be our first drive there, but our last! My family will be moving from their WV home back to Texas mid-August. On Saturday night, we left the kids there and headed back to Annapolis to prepare for our mission trip to Boston, MA!


Boston Mission Trip
On Monday, July 12th our group of mostly youth and college students began a tiring week of working with Grace Church Boston. We spent our time there cleaning, canvassing neighborhoods with service invitations, cleaning, passing out free granola bars at T stops, cooking, cleaning, smuggling 18 boys through 2 hotel showers each day, touring the city and of course cleaning. The church building was unbelievably dirty! We also did A LOT of walking! Although at times this trip was frustrating to my OCD nature, we were able to reach thousands of homes in the Boston area and lead a worship service our last night there. Boston was a great place to VISIT. So rich with American history! I would love to go back and finish the Freedom Trail.


Cake Boss
On our way back to Maryland we stopped in Hoboken, NJ to visit the home of the Cake Boss! We waited in line and braved the crowds inside Carlo's Bakery. It was nuts. We made it out with some very yummy sweet treats! I think that pit stop was fun and enjoyed by many in our group. A good end to our mission trip. At this point, I was counting down the minutes until I could see and hold my sweet babies! We had never been away from them that long before and we missed them like crazy.

Birthday Girl
It felt so good to get home on Saturday night. In the past week we had driven through Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts (in probably the same amount of time it would take to drive across Texas). I was exhausted. Was it time to settle down? Nope. I still had a birthday party to throw and Vacation Bible School to prepare for! Emorie had a blast at her Build-a-Bear party and we are so grateful for everyone who came to celebrate with us! On July 20th Emorie turned 3 years old. I can hardly believe it! Our baby girl is growing up so fast!! Emorie and Ryland make me love being a mom even more every day.

Vacation Bible School

The next weekend was eventful to say the least. First, we had a couple of the hottest days of the year so far and our air conditioner decided to break. It's a misconception that it's cooler up here. It can get just as hot in Annapolis as it does in Denton. Plus the humidity is insane here. Yuck! We then had a freak storm which caused tens of thousands of houses and businesses in our area to be without power for hours. For some, days. This was last Sunday, the day we were supposed to start Vacation Bible School. Needless to say, we had a bit of a rough start to VBS. Eventually, our air conditioner was fixed and power was restored to our church and friends. After having to cancel one night of activities and having a shortened night without lights and air, we finished up with a great week, never losing sight of the reason for VBS. Our church is so blessed with wonderful volunteers who made it all happen! It was all in His plan!

So that brings us to July 31st. Whew!

Day in the District

Last Friday we had the opportunity to spend most of the afternoon and evening in Washington, DC without kids!! Thank you Naegeli's! After lunch, we drove to the nearest Metro station, got on, and headed in to the city. Our first stop was Capitol South where we met our friend Donelle who works for Texas Representative Kenny Marchant. What an exciting job! We're such tourists. We were able to see his office and even sit behind his desk. Haha. We were then put on a tour of the Capitol (which was actually like an hour later, after passing through a lot of security). The tour started with a short film and then we walked through the Capitol building looking at the many beautiful statues (2 for each state) and paintings. My headset wasn't working, but it sounded like the tour guide was telling us a lot of interesting facts about the pieces of artwork. As we were trying to take a picture of the statue of Sam Houston, our group left us and we never found them again. Chris did not think this was funny, but I was laughing anyway.

the picture we were taking when our group left

So that was the end of our guided tour. The Capitol building is huge and very confusing, but we finally found where to go to see the Gallery. We spent another hour dropping off our phones and electronics and going through more security before entering the Gallery viewing area. We happened to sit down a few minutes before they came into session. Although we didn't understand what they were saying and it was only for about two minutes, it was neat to be sitting in the Gallery while "in session".

By this time most of our day was gone, but we got back on the Metro and got off at the Mall. We spent the rest of the time we had left before dinner in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History (and didn't even go through the entire museum). We came to the conclusion that we need to spend at least two more full days in DC just to do the basics. We got on the Metro once again and got off in Chinatown to meet Donelle again and her husband Joel. Joel is a good friend of ours from college. We ate dinner together at a really cool Italian restaurant called Vapiano. Yes I know, Italian food in Chinatown, but it was so good! We had a great time catching up and I felt so at home talking to people that come from the same place we do. I get asked all the time "do you miss Texas?" Honestly, I don't really miss it. I just miss the people in Texas, our amazing friends and family! It's been great having a few of our friends visit already. After the Webb's spent a week with us, I was sad to see them go. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love our new church family! Sometimes it's just comforting to have people around that we've known for so long; something familiar in an unfamiliar place.


We finished up the night by taking the Metro to the Harder's (Joel and Donelle) house in Alexandria, VA to have dessert. It's weird to travel to another state and back home in one night. They showed us Old Town Alexandria and we ate some very yummy peach cobbler. It was a great day!

Recapping the past 4 months...

Hello everyone! Since we are frequently asked how we are doing and how we are adjusting to the move, we have decided to start an official family blog. What was supposed to be our "family" blog seems to be used primarily for thoughts on Ska music and electronic devices, so we have created a blog specifically dedicated to what is going on with the Nuckels family! Supposedly the real Naptown is Indianapolis, but it works with our last name, so we're going with it.


The Story So Far...
Four months ago we moved from our home town of Denton, Texas to Annapolis, Maryland for Christian to begin working in full-time music ministry. Weems Creek Baptist Church, the church to which we have come, is a great family of believers. When we first arrived, this entire area of the country was covered in tons of snow! This was a bit of an adjustment for us, but Emorie seemed to do very well.

Our first Sunday, we were greeted by the church with a "pounding" [pictured below]. This is apparently when the people of the church collect a massive amount of food and household goods to bestow upon the new minister. We were truly overwhelmed with gratitude. We are still working on this enormous supply of food and other household items!

We began getting settled in and found that living 30 minutes away from Baltimore and D.C. has the great advantage of never being without something to do as a family. It seemed that almost every weekend we were able to go somewhere new and experience something fun together. Michaela even took a day trip to NYC! Baltimore has a great children's museum and aquarium in the downtown area known as the "Inner Harbor" [pictured below].

We also were able to check out the Cherry Blossoms in D.C. which was an amazing time to see our nation's capitol. The kids got really tired really fast, but it was so worth it! There are so many other places near us that we can't wait to visit!

Needless to say we are having a blast and these first few months have felt kind of like a weird, long vacation. Of course, there are drawbacks to leaving your friends and family so far behind. We really wish that everyone could have come to see Ryland turn 1 year old. I could tell you all about it, but as Christian would say, "a .jpg is woth a thousand .doc's." ...nerd. (He wrote that!)

So, besides all of the family fun what else is new? Well, Christian was officially ordained "So - Bap" Style two Sundays ago and is thoroughly enjoying his ministry work. Emorie has started a dance class and both Emorie and Ryland have been LOVING gymnastics.

We love to frequent many of the beautiful parks here in town. Oh yeah... did I mention our Target? This picture doesn't really do it justice, because it is on the 3rd FLOOR. The actual store is not really anything special, but we think it's really cool to park in the garage and use the cart escalator!

So, we know that this is info overload, but we wanted to get you all caught up with the reader's digest version of the past four months. Check back to see more fun updates on the Nuckels family adventures! We are going to leave you with a few pictures of our new city. It is becoming increasingly evident that we are living in one of the most beautiful places, but even still we miss you all!