Sushi date, part six

Winter seems to come and go with fits and starts this season, with a blizzard here and there and temperatures ranging from single digits to almost 50. I'm not complaining one bit, of course, but Vivian and I have learned that if we want to take our little girl outside to play, we have to make sure to time it just right. Personally, there's nothing I find cozier that doing freelance work from inside my warm, cozy house.

 

On January 26, Vivian and I were able to leave Hannah with the grandparents and go on our sixth annual Sushi Date together. For those of you who haven't been reading for the past couple years, Vivian and I went to Sakura Bana on the night we "made it official" and started dating, so we've gone out for sushi together every year since then (including going all the way to the seafood buffet at the Rio in Las Vegas). This time around, we dropped by Okinawa Sushi at 120th and L, making use of a Living Social coupon and getting a giant sushi boat to share. I swear, there's something about sashimi that tastes both decadent and healthful all at the same time. After dinner, we took a stroll downtown to the Old Market to get some ice cream at Ted & Wally's. Tonight, they were serving garlic butter popcorn, which brought out a grimace from Vivian (we got baklava and apple pie instead).

It's hard to believe that it's been six whole years since we first started dating. Of course, I like to remind the two of us that we are still dating — we just have some special circumstances nowadays.

The Cheese Party

 

Last Saturday, the Johnson Family hosted the third Cheese Party at our home in Bellevue. We've been hosting it every other year since 2009, and January always seemed like the perfect, dreary month to do something fun after the holidays. (Naturally, about a hundred other people this year decided the same thing.) In any case, we had a fun time with our typical cluster of cheesy friends, sipping wine and trying out a number of hard, soft, and stinky cheeses together. Mark won the crown for a tasty Dubliner cheese and Phil and Jen won for a soft, stinky cheese. Ryan took the prize in for cheesiest joke after several rounds, which eventually turned into dirty limericks (after Hannah went to bed). We spent a little too much time cheesing around to watch one of the fine cheesy movies that Phil and Jen brought, but hopefully we'll have the chance to do that next year. The Return of Captain Invincible looked suitably cheesy.

In other news, Walmart had some frozen turkeys on sale for 50 cents a pound, so Vivian and I bought a large one and decided to roast it. Add in some stuffing and cranberry sauce from Aldi and we had ourselves a little Thanksgiving in January, which was delicious. Hannah also turned 14 months old, becoming more a little lady every day. We also paid a visit to Lisa and her ailing mom, quite happy to share what adorableness our little girl can bring to those in need.

Keeping busy in Lincoln

 

On Wednesday, I had some business that took me to Lincoln, and I decided to take the family with me to make a day of it. We took a trip up to James Arthur Vineyard since we had Living Social coupon that was about to expire. We used it to sample a couple wines and have some bread, cheese, and sausage together. It was a nice, quiet place in the middle of the day, and I made a note to look into coming back sometime in the summer, when the combination of live music and wine makes for a fun evening.

Before leaving town, we dropped by to visit our old friend Bekah at the Duewling dwelling. Mike was out of town, but we did get to introduce Hannah to Bekah and her four kids (soon to be five). It's always a thrill to see Hannah interact with other kids close to her own age, and especially nice to let her run around another childproof house with the grown ups catch up over chai tea.

Ringing it in

The holidays have quickly drawn to a close, and I felt reluctant to let the Yuletide Joy pass away into the boring cold winter of just plain January. Of course, we still have one last hurrah in the form of New Year's Eve, which means fun with friends, as usual.

The first stop on the party train was Katie's birthday, which actually falls on New Year's Eve, but we celebrated the Saturday before. Vivian and I made the trek from Bellevue to one of Omaha's nine or ten Olive Gardens, all of which were packed to the brim with people requiring us to park our car somewhere in the middle of Elkhorn and climb over a few snowy mountains to make our way back. We brought Hannah along, and she seemed to enjoy chowing down on lasagna and chicken Parmesan with the rest of us.

After dinner, we scooted on down to Katie's house afterward to have cake and participate in everyone's newest favorite game: Progressive Word-Guessing. This where we all submit words based on a theme (Halloween, Christmas, winter, or whatever we happen to be doing at the moment). We have two teams and for the first round (using Jon's Droid as a timer) each team member takes a turn trying to get the others to say the word by describing it without saying the word itself. For the next round, we do the same thing only using two words. For the third round, we use only charades, and for the fourth (and rarely reached) round, we have sound effects. It's been a fairly easy stand-by game requiring only slips of paper, a bowl, and a timer, and is still the only way you can scream "Buddy the Elf" in public.

On New Year's Eve, our family dropped by Pastor Drew's house for an evening with their herd of kids and a few other friends from church. We brought an assortment of nibblins' for dinner, which included addictive quinoa cupcakes made with Parmesan cheese courtesy of Kelly. Hannah enjoyed getting some girl time with the Rietjens kids, who played quietly when they weren't treating her like a giant doll that they could tackle, dress up, and put to bed at will. The "adults" got to play a series of crazy games based on "minute to win it," which included stacking chocolate donuts, golf balls, swinging fruit, and shaking our butts. It was a fun and crazy way to finish off the end of the year, and we watched a series of funny YouTube videos as the year concluded, toasting it with Martinelli's before going home.

In other news, Hannah loves bubbles.

2012 Wrap-Up

2012 was an eventful year for the Johnson family, and we got to experience all kinds of "firsts" with our new little girl, Hannah. Here are some highlights:

• In January, we hosted an hors d'eourve party, had some "offal" food with Phil and Jen, said farewell to the Prairie Cats, and laid Vivian's cockateil Babo to rest.
• In February, we got a heaping helping of overnight snow. Vivian and I had Valentine's Day at Catfish Lake and with friends at church. I had my first father-daughter dance, and Hannah also went to the circus. Vivian and I also helped Jenny move out of her house and then attended parties at Hugh's and Dean's.
• In March, we attended fish fry after fish fry. Jenny had a housewarming, Pastor Mark Ashton went swing dancing, and Vivian and I had our first family picnic. We also surprised our friend Don and attended a murder mystery costume party.
• In April, we had a lemon party to kick off springtime, and then we took Hannah to the park. We celebrated a birthday or two a little Easter in-between, and Vivian and I ate some rocky mountain oysters.
• In May, we had Lindy (and Windy) in the Park, celebrated Mother's Day, saw Mitt Romney, and had a lakeside work party. We also did some karaoke at the Pizza Shoppe, sweat to the oldies at Jon's house, and helped move a friend or two.
• In June, I celebrated my first Father's Day. Hannah saw her first baseball game and her first Shakespeare on the Green. We also went camping and canoeing with some friends on the Niobrara River.
• In July, the family came to visit. We danced in a parade, went to Jazz on the Green, sampled beer at Upstream, and took Hannah swimming for the first time. Vivian and I also had an anniversary day at Fun Plex.
• In August, we took a practice vacation to Kansas City, had some fun outdoors, and witnessed somebody kidnap a few of Eric's plush friends.
• In September, Vivian and I spent a week in northern California visiting several family members and old friends. Hannah also got to experience the Cowtown corn-eating contest.
• In October, the Johnson Family carved a few pumpkins and dressed up as s'mores for Halloween.  We also kicked off autumn with a hayrack ride and a trip to Vala's.
• In November, we got to "eat mor chikin" at Bellevue's first Chick-Fil-A. Hannah visited the zoo, celebrated her first birthday, and had some Thanksgiving with us. We also introduced her to Santa at the Durham.
• In December, I made like Clark Griswold and lit up our house for the first time. Hannah experienced snow for the first time, we had some chili, and we celebrated the end of the world. We also celebrated Christmas, of course, with a couple of our friends, and we had a wacky New Year's party with our pastor.

Merry Christmas, 2012!

 

Merry Christmas, everyone! Christmas seemed to come awfully quick this year, and Vivian and I found ourselves scrambling to get last-minute stocking stuffers (with a Living Social coupon, of course) and wrap presents before the big day arrived. Fortunately, all our gifts went out on schedule, even a last-minute Hannah Calendar I made for my folks and forgot to send until the Thursday before Christmas.

On Christmas Eve, we stopped by Twin Valley Church for their candlelight Christmas Eve service. I was on hand to do the overhead lyrics, as usual, and I also grabbed my camera to snap several pictures of the kids and adults all participating up at the front of the church. Afterward, we invited  Donna's co-worker Shirley over to our house to have a dinner of hors d'eourves and then open our "stockings" together before bedtime.

 

Christmas Day brought with it a predictable slew of loot. Vivian got a gravy boat, Jack got some pants, Donna got a trifle bowl, I got a relic of America's past, and our friend Eric dropped by and made off with some WD-40 (among other things). Hannah got an activity center with enough buttons to keep her occupied for a while, and Vivian also got a decoy present to distract her from the real one hiding around the corner (a Nintendo Wii marked for Hannah).

We finished off the evening with a giant Christmas dinner with all the trimmings for the six of us. Once our family recovers from a series of colds we'll have to get an early start on our New Year's Resolution and hit the Y to work off some of the Christmas goodness we've been enjoying. And by goodness I mean fudge. Lots of it.

It's the end of the world as we know it ...

 

... and we feel fine. Part of the reason for that is we invited a bunch of our mutual friends over to celebrate the end of the Mayan calendar and civilization as we know it. We invited everyone to bring along whatever food and drink they'd like to indulge in for their last day on earth, so we had shrimp cocktails with champagne, pigs in blankets, cookies, and everything else you can imagine (including homemade egg nog from Phil and Jen). We played an insanely silly game of "Encore," which required us to name endless series of songs containing a word chosen from a deck of cards. I think we could have let Jen and Jessica do most of the guessing. My brothers even stopped by to join us, and we had a pre-Christmas gift exchange before calling it a night.

 

You also might have heard about a line of snowstorms that hit the midwest over the past week — we went from being green and soggy to having a white Christmas after all. That was good news for Hannah, because she got to put on her snow clothes and go outside to experience snow for the first time in her life (and just in time for her 13-month birthday). She seemed to enjoy it, though she discovered quickly that walking in snow wasn't going to be as easy as toddling around on the driveway. This was also the first time she's ever walked outside.

 

On Sunday, Vivian and I celebrated our First Date anniversary, commemorating the night six years ago when I took her out for the first time to the French Cafe (completely by accident — La Casa Pizza was unexpectedly bursting at the seams and didn't take reservations). We went to see the Hobbit at the Twin Creek theater, which was a very decent film, albeit very long and padded with extra scenes. (Remember the "extended" versions of the Lord of the Rings films? Yeah, it was like that times two.) Afterward, we headed up to Benson and had a dinner of tapas at España, making use of an about-to-expire coupon. I had a decent margarita and we both filled up on an assortment of tiny dishes served family-style: fried cheese, blue cheese stuffed mushrooms, Picadillo de Carne, Flamenquines, and seviche.

Afterward, per tradition, we made our way down to the Old Market and braved a few blocks of freezing cold to get some egg nog fudge from the Old Market Candy Shop.

Next stop: Christmas!