Blizzards and Baby Food

Last week we were slammed with a big, beautiful snow storm. We went from no snow on the ground to a whole bunch'a snow over night. I believe the final count was about 11 inches of the stuff. So, we spent much of last week just keeping cozy by watching movies, making soups and reading. Here are a few photos of the snow.

Beginning of the storm

Watching movies and keeping warm

 Once the weather worked itself out, we decided to go out for some sushi. Momma forgot the diaper bag with Poppy's bottle and teething toys, so when she started fussing the waitress brought out avocado and orange slices for baby, in hopes that it would keep her happy. It worked! And she showed Momma and Daddy how good she is at eating solid foods! So, we've been slowly introducing her to yummy things all week.

She loved the orange on our sushi date! I think the rind felt good on her teething gums, too.

Then Momma made banana bread and let Poppy have a nibble. She's hooked. Here is a video of her first taste.

We also let her have her very first pancake and she was in breakfast heaven!

It's so fun to watch her explore different foods. She's so enthusiastic about almost everything

she's tried, so far. (with the exception of mashed, boiled carrots and kiwi. She's not a fan.)

Poppy's New Talent!

She speaks! or at least tries to! It's a combination of Mama and Baba and yesterday she began using it as a means of communication for everything. We can't get enough of her sweet voice.

President's Day Weekend

We spent our President's Day morning being lazy and watching the fleeting snowstorm.

 We spent the afternoon gathering cobblestones downtown, for bookshelves we are building. We hit the jack pot when we found an old junk yard behind the railroad tracks. The cobblestones are beautiful! They're engraved by the company that laid them in the late 1800's early 1900's and in practically perfect condition. We'll post pictures of the bookshelves once we've completed them. For now, here is a picture of Poppy on our adventure. Silly girl. 

Afterwards, we went to Aroma's Coffeehouse for some warmth (it was freezing yesterday!)

Then, Daddy went to work on instruments for a few hours while Poppy and Momma got dinner ready. 

We had ravioli stuffed with crab meat, goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes with spinach salad. Then, we snuggled up with a movie and big blankets. Hope you had a happy President's Day, too!

Happy Valentine's Day

The J-birds had a sweet little Valentine's day, full of a lot of love.

Momma had a big box of chocolates and heart confetti and hot coffee in a homemade, to-go, heart studded coffee cup (not pictured) waiting on the kitchen table when Daddy got up for work in the morning! She was going to have red heart pancakes ready for him, but he got up for work earlier than usual, so that he could spend the whole evening at home with momma and baby.

Around 11 o'clock momma and Poppy heard the doorbell ring, when we answered there was a big, beautiful bouquet of spring flowers sitting on the doormat. Like, seriously beautiful flowers.

Momma and Poppy then spent the rest of the afternoon attempting to make the flour-less chocolate

cake that Momma and Daddy would get every Valentine's Day at Gourmandies in Salt Lake.

It worked! It tasted almost exactly like the Gourmandies cake! That was a proud kitchen moment for Momma! Then Momma and Poppy got the house cleaned up and waited for Daddy to get home so we could have more Valentine fun!

Another V-day tradition in the J-bird nest is French Onion Soup (usually from Gourmandies as well). So, this year, Daddy had the idea of spending the evening making our tradition dish from scratch! It was really fun and sooo much tastier than any french onion restaurant soup we've ever had! Daddy made the broth using beef chunks and lots of veggies and letting it simmer for a few hours. Then momma was in charge of the rest of the soup. She chopped up 2 big onions (practically with her eyes closed, dang onions) sauteed them, brought the homemade broth to a boil, added worcestershire sauce, a dab of butter, dash of salt, dash of pepper and let it simmer for 15 min. Then we baked baguette slices in the oven for a few minutes with provolone cheese on top to get it all melty. And this is what we ended up with!

It may not look like much, but it tasted AMAZING!

Next we played a few rounds of scrabble. Daddy won, but momma is getting much better at that game.
While Momma and Daddy played, Poppy danced to the music we had on. She is so fun.

Daddy loved the cake! He couldn't even wait for a fork, he just dug right in!

Then we snuggled on the couch and watched a movie. It was a perfect day.
Hope you all had a sweet Valentine's Day, too!

Mardi Gras/ Fat Tuesday

Our friends Mike and Alana, whom we've mentioned before, invited us over to their home on Tuesday for gumbo, king's cake and cocktails in celebration of Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday! We love hanging out with them and, as I've also mentioned before, they are SO sweet with Poppy. I captured a couple of cute moments with the three of them.

It was Alana's first time making gumbo and it was really tasty! I didn't get a picture of it because I ate it so fast, ha. But, I did get a shot of our festive drinks and borrowed a picture from Alana's Instagram of the king's cake she made, which was also delicious!

It was a fun, scrumptious, low key evening. We're very glad to have found friends like them, here in Omaha.

Weekend'ing

Friday night was the gallery show. Saturday was a pizza party at our friends Cy and Anita's house with their 3 kiddos. Sunday was brunch, violin shop visit, rain and snuggles.

Pesto Chicken Pizza and other goodies.

This is Gabriel hiding from Poppy cause "she's a guuhhl"

Brunch at the Market Basket.

Daddy with his newest violin

Pretties from the shop.

Daddy and baby and violin

Poppy sitting up in her crib like a big girl.

beginning of rain clouds.

"Conversations on a Bus" Gallery Opening

We have so much to talk about in regards to last night! Yet again, we had a wonderful, artistically driven, exciting, inspiring and friend-making evening, here in the midwest. Our new pals, that were briefly introduced in the Insta-Grammy blog post last week, Jameson and Heather Hooton, invited us to the opening of their photography project "Conversations on a Bus" in which they collaborated with local poet extraordinaire Sarah McKinstry-Brown and Omaha Creative Institute. It was held at the RNG Gallery just over the river in Council Bluffs. We excitedly accepted their invitation, dolled Poppy up in pigtails and one of her aunty's dresses that Grandma Rita passed down to her and we headed out to the opening. Before we get to pictures of the event, I think a little back story is important.

Jameson and Heather are married photographers in Omaha, NE. From the short time we've known them, we've found them very warm and inviting. Upon seeing their work, we became immediate and enthusiastic supporters of their craft. They met in college and they both majored in music (Heather plays the violin! Which makes Christopher super happy, obviously) but after getting married, they discovered their love for photography and now here they are years later. Their latest project (besides everything else they're doing, busy bodies!) is the aptly titled photo essay "Conversations on a Bus" where they literally rode the busses around Omaha, started conversations with people, recorded those conversations, with permission, and then took a candid photograph of the person. It sounds simple enough, but last night at the opening, while reading the conversations and looking at the big black and white photos, I literally found myself in tears. Their project took people you see every single day, but, that we only acknowledge briefly, as furniture in our own little worlds. Just props that give our own stage some depth. Jameson and Heather took those props and turned them back into people and reminded us that the woman next to you on the bus lost her job three months ago and loves her grandchildren more than anything in this world and couldn't believe her eyes the first time she saw a snow storm. That the man with the big smile served in Pearl Harbor and he loves photography above all things and when he retires he's going to pull out that camera his mother gave him when he was 12 and let it capture the things he finds most beautiful in this world. And thanks to last night's event, Chris and I discovered how much we like our over-the-river neighborhood, Council Bluffs. It has the sweetest little main street with old brick-stone buildings, fun restaurants, galleries and other shops. We'll be back to explore soon! Anyway, I'll stop rambling. If you want to know more about the project just click HERE and HERE. If you want to hear the podcast that features this project, produced by The Crux, click HERE

Now, some photos from last night. Enjoy!

Poppy congratulating Jameson and Heather.

Daddy and Poppy.

It was a great turnout. The Hootons have a lot of loving supporters.

As usual, Poppy was a hit. She was making friends left and right. We received many compliments
on her sweet temperament and enthusiasm. We are so proud to be her parents.

The bridge in Council Bluffs is an art form in and of itself! This photo doesn't do it much justice, though.

Weekend Re-cap

After our fun night out on the town, Mama caught that silly flu-bug that's been going around. So, the rest of the weekend was pretty low key. We did, however, squeeze in a dinner date with our pals Mike and Alana. We love spending time with them and they are so cute with Poppy

Poppy was sort of fussy at dinner, but nothing Mike and Alana couldn't fix.

The rest of the weekend was spent with Mama resting, Poppy snuggling and Daddy working.

Dad made mom a magic, spicy, veggie soup to cure her sickness.

And spoiled her with pretty flowers

Poppy kept trying to crawl, but found it exhausting.

 on Monday mama started feeling a little better and decided to bake some cookies.

It was nice to relax and be cozy as a little family, even if we weren't feeling so hot.

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Poppy's New Talent

Another post of "Poppy's New Talent". Today's talent is sitting up all by herself! This came out of nowhere. She just decided to surprise us, yesterday, with her super cute sitting abilities.

here's a video of it

Papa & Mama's Big Night Out

Last night we attended the Benson Insta-Grammys! It was a fun photo competition that mama entered and two of her photos were finalist. So, we called up a babysitter, that we were referred to by Chris' employer, and put on some fun clothes.

Mama baked chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter filling and peanut butter- buttercream icing and heart cakes for the babysitter to enjoy.

 Then it was off to the big event! We didn't take many photos, because almost immediately upon arriving, we met a really fun couple and spent the whole night getting to know them and laughing our heads off. But, here are a few shots from the night.

Here we are on the "Shag Carpet" getting our photos taken by the
"Paper-razzi" at Paper Doll Vintage boutique. Just ignore Chris'
awkwardly placed hand and Brittany's strange face. We were havin
a good time, so whateverrrr.

Here is a shot of the announcer for the Insta-Grammy awards
We didn't win the photo contest, but we won some amazing
new friends, so we'll just mark last night as a success. 

These are our new friends Heather and Jameson! They're married photographers.
Check out their work on their website by clicking HERE.

I wish we had taken more photos of our fun outfits we wore and the adorable pre-party, with all it's pretty treats and fun people and happy music, but, we were too busy enjoying all of those things to bother with photos. Ah, well.
We had a really great time!

And on a parental note: the babysitter referred to us is an absolute sweetheart and Poppy took to her immediately. She also just lives down the street from us. We were very pleased with her and felt very comfortable trusting her with our little blossom. She even sent us a cute picture message of her and Poppy cuddling, while we were out on our date. All good things, here! Hope you're all keeping warm!