Category Archives: Personal Pics

The Day After

And they were hitched. Abby already posted some pictures, but I wanted to post a few of my own and give ’em my own spin.


This was our first glimpse of the bride. The photographers snuck outside with Tim and Nicole before most of us saw her and started taking pictures. I don’t know if all that sneaking was intentional, but that’s the way it seemed. When I spotted them through the window we started making faces at Nicole, making her laugh during the pictures.


The already but not yet of the wedding day. It came out pretty blurry (which gives it an interesting dynamic), but this one shows the expectation. Get on with it already (this was near the end of the photographing).


Da boys, da boys, da boys. Both Andy and Tim were in my wedding. It was good to get dressed up and be nervous together again.


Together again (where are they now?): Lance (Twin Cities), Tara (Twin Cities, Lance’s girlyfriend) , Andy (East Coast), Kevin (Twin Cities), Abby (Twin Cities), Nicole (moving to Montana), Tim (for the last four months my second bedroom; moving to Montana), Neals (moving back to the Twin Cities in a matter of weeks), Jeremy (Seattle), Nathan (just outside the Twin Cities).


Wait, we didn’t get our picture taken! I almost changed out of my monkey suit without taking any pictures with my wife. This shot grossed Andy out: “Eww!” Of course he kept taking too long, so we just kept kissing.

There’s so much hurry up and wait in weddings. You spend so much time getting dressed up fancy, you spend even more time waiting, then you capture the moment in photographic cell. Then the actual ceremony itself, some fancy food, and it’s over before you know it.

Tell that to my feet. We weren’t expecting the two sermons, and I’d already been on my feet all day. But it could have been worse. I could have been the groomsmen who had to step out and throw up. A flu bug was making the rounds, infecting an entire family in a matter of days. But the inflicted groomsmen made a discreet exit and entrance and hardly anyone knew what happened. Pretty minor snags in a once in a lifetime celebration.

Weddings are odd. So much hassle and work and stress for a day to mark the transition between two and one. It’s such an odd day. It’s the ultimate before and after point, a stuck in the middle day.

So much giddiness and love and excitement. It’s easy for a marriage to slip into the day to day, the simple interactions, the failed sacrifices. You forget the story, as odd as it sounds, you forget your own story that makes your friendship so magical. The very fact you’re together, even if it’s washing the dishes, is amazing. What would you do without?

Beardy

Before.After.

My role as Jesus has now officially come to an end. Sadly, I was never really able to grow in a full beard. It was spotty at best. But it feels good to be back to normal.

Though if it’s any consolation, one of the junior highers said he planned to grow his own beard for next year so he could play Jesus. That was just before some of the junior high guys were arguing over who had more chest hair. Not much of an argument when “chest hair” is in the singular sense.

Freshman

1994 West Bloomfield High School year book photo

I don’t even know why I’m posting this, but here’s my freshman year book photo from high school. I scanned it for my “When I was Your Age…” column in my youth group’s newsletter. Now that it’s 2004 it somehow seems fitting to post a picture from 1994.

The psuedo-mullet sticking out from the right is actually my brother. I opted to save him the embarrassment and crop him out. Most of him anyway.

Now that I look at it, I’m finding the similarity between my 1994 self and my illustrated self to be incredibly eerie.

Boo-rrito

Kevin dressed up as a burrito. Mmm... burrito. (photo by Matthew Taylor)

As you can tell from the picture, I had a serious business lunch today. Chipotle was handing out free burritos if you came in dressed as one. So there you go. That’s an attempt at lettuce, cheese/rice (take your pick) and a pinto bean or two spilling out of my always enormous Chipotle burrito.

Believe it or not, of all the people at Chipotle who knew about the free burrito deal, I most resembled an actual burrito. Most people just wrapped something in tinfoil and called it good.

Hey, free food is free food. Get yourself some tinfoil and head on over to Chipotle (assuming you’ve got one).

Happy Melloween

Since this will be our first Halloween in our own house, we thought it would be appropriate to carve some pumpkins.

Homestar Runner & Strongbad

Homestar Runner carved by Abby

Strongbad carved by Kevin

Homestar Runner & Strongbad hanging out in the window.

It’s been a while since I’ve carved pumpkins, but it’s a lot of fun. For those of you totally out of the loop, we carved Homestar Runner and Strongbad, the stars of the best web site ever. Their Halloween cartoon is usually one of the best, and that’s what got me hooked (look in the Toons archive, under Holidays).

My Dad, early 1970s

My Dad.This is my dad, smoking a pipe and reading a magazine, sometime in the early 1970s. Those sideburns are an essential part of Hendricks family history, and I’m proud to say they’re now electronically preserved.

But seriously, for Thanksgiving my wife and I traveled to the flat state of Kansas for turkey dinner with the fam. Part of the holiday included rummaging through a box of family history stuff, including photos from the 1920s-70s and two journals from my great-great grandfather, dating 1908-1910 and around 1920. Very interesting stuff about going to market and the “elegant fine weather.” I’ll have to go into more detail later. The sideburns and pipe photo will have to tide you over for now.