Grandpa Storms

My grandpa, Robert Thomas Storms was a treasure amongst men. We lost him Thursday night due to his body only being able handle 90 years of being awesome.

This man stormed the beach at Normandy in WWII, and survived to become a house mover, a milkman, a beloved father, husband, and grandfather, and to preach the gospel for over 45 years.

I remember him helping us to capture wild rabbits with a box and a string tied to a stick, cutting up cantaloupes from his garden and making watermelon rind pickles. He would help us build and outfit our little girl forts with flowers and pop tarts cut out of peg board, and we would balance coins on the railroad tracks and come home with the warm, paper thin disks in our pockets. He would take walks every day, returning with his pearl snap shirt stuffed with old cans he'd cleaned up off the roadside. Both Jesse and Ruby's middle names are 'Storms' in his honor, and he would smile if he knew that 'Tacks, the boy disaster' dedicated a song to him the night of his funeral at a dirty rock club in downtown Austin.

He was strong as an ox, laughed easily, nursed my ailing grandmother for years and raised up a damn fine daddy for me. If it's true what they say about storing up riches in heaven, I can't wait to sip divine coffee with ambrosia salad in the palace gardens of New Robert Stormslandia.

I love you Grandpa!

We are to Fiesta

This post title was a bit of an inside joke, originating from a week of baby birthday parties we attended. So many in fact, that Ruby woke up in the morning declaring "We are to party?" because that's what we do. Incidentally it became a family saying, and Fiesta is our wonderful Mexican grocery, which of course means 'party' in spanish. Aaaand joke is no longer funny due to over-explaining by mommy.

Anyhow, I love Fiesta! It is never busy during normal busy times, they have roasted corn carts and fresh bolillos, and the produce is abundant, exotic and affordable. They have an awesome international foods section where you can find the real Heinz baked beans for your english breakfasts, Salvadorian crema (divine!) all manner of strange pastes
and spices, and your sundry Asian noodles.

You can also fill your larder with actual lard, which they sell in buckets. I usually lean more towards olive oil, but to each his own! Pork rinds the size of Rhode Island! I took a few pictures of Ruby and my adventure there, she enjoying a pumpkin empanada and I squeezing and sniffing papayas. Papayas are an acquired taste, like scotch, or my singing. They smell a little like feet but they are delicious and a beautiful deep coral color inside with a buttery texture. Ruby is shown holding a dragon fruit, and the other weird things are tuna (looks like prickly pear), nopals (cactus), serrano peppers, tamarind sugar, crazy giant squash and the brown egg shaped things are mamey, which I bought one of but have yet to carve up. Interesting mamey facts here, the seed has magical properties!

God bless you Fiesta, my one stop, gold jewelry, balloon animals, face painting, cell phone, carpet seller, sno-cone, housewares, macho salve, chicken feet, tres leches, hoochie diva fashion store.

Hot time, summer in the city

How to beat the heat: Lick cold stuff.

Jesse's 1st birthday

Was over a month ago! But here is a video of his birthday breakfast at the Austin Diner where I actually worked as a waitress ten years ago. He ate his weight in pancakes and then helped us finish our plates as well. Being devastatingly, teeth-grindingly cute burns a TON of calories ya'll.

Sister Sister

I don't mind being a little bit broke all the time, it is well worth it to have my chaotic musical art house, but when it prevents me from seeing my family it stabs below the belt. However, thanks to Brooke and her ability to log hours at the tech firm to support her creative nature, we just stole a sister weekend together!

Amber hasn't set foot in Austin since our wedding, and it was wonderful seeing her milky white Colorado self down here in the sunshine again. They were good sports about the wild imps leaping and tumbling into their bed in the morning, and even choked down the black tar Evan and I refer to as "coffee".

After a late night of playing Scruples and catching up, we made a spicy brunch of eggs and green sauce and I dragged them to the rock store to pick out some birthday presents. (I love rocks and started a collection "for Ruby" so I could have an excuse to stockpile the shiny beauties) Brooke chose a lovely pendant with a white stone and Ruby fell in love with a carved dancing bug inside a nut. I also didn't escape unadorned or my wallet unscathed. Naughty mommy!

We feasted on Pollo Regio, hung out with neighbors and Jesse and Evan had man time at the coffee shop. Later that night we slapped on some makeup and wended our way downtown. Yellow Jacket on the east side was both intimate enough to talk about love and busy enough to check out the pretty fashionistas and bearded bicycles on their garden patio. We traipsed around the block to the Liberty for fried beets with mayonnaise (amazing!) and didn't even get mugged, groped, or our car towed.
Successful Austining, Day 1!

learning the internet

Follow my blog with Bloglovin


I guess I want people to "follow" me? The internet is awkward! And fun!

Today I will be trying to turn the music room from a dusty boy cave into a clean and comfy sister nook for the weekend, and also learning how to edit in imovie so I can post.....
The first episode of my cooking show segment!
Here's a clue:
Sushi.

I will leave you with a photo of bald baby Ruby camping in the wild, and a giant.

Not much happened today, except my sister turned 27! Happy birthday Brooke! (a.k.a Baby Girl Storms) We celebrated by cleaning house, listening to radio shows and going to the park. I've been reading a bunch of fashion blogs lately so I included a couple snaps of me and my not very exciting outfit because I love it when other people do. Feel free to make fun of my botched bangs done with child scissors! French toast, piano lessons, band practice and sharing a bubble bath with Ruby. It was 98 degrees today instead of 104 and it felt positively balmy. O Texas.

I can barely contain my excitement because BOTH of my sisters are coming to visit from Colorado in 2 days. The Storms girls will destroy you, Austin!

books, records, wagons and treasure

Hooray for new books. I unearthed an unused gift card leftover from Christmas and had a very mild spree online ordering three beautiful picture books for those babies, insatiable readers! After burning holes in the mailwoman (mailperson? mailamerican.) with my eyes for a week they finally arrived. 'Children Make Terrible Pets' by Peter Brown, 'A Sick Day for Amos McGee' by Phillip C. Stead, pictures by Erin E. Stead (husband and wife? I hope so, that's dang romantic!) Seriously. I want to do that. Also 'the Quiet Book' by Deborah Underwood, pictures by Renata Liwska.

I love them all but the illustrations in "A Sick Day...' make my little artist heart swoon. If I were a teen I would rip them all out and tape them in my locker with hearts drawn around them. Don't get me wrong, I mean, huh! I still look like a teen.
(Actually I do get carded buying wine if I leave the babies at home, but it could be the braids and cartoon shirts that Evan routinely allows me to leave the house wearing.)

Aging. It happens. It is really interesting to be at the age where half of my friends look balding and paunchy and the other half still look lithe and fashionable. From what I can deduce it's routine that makes you old. Not alcohol, drugs, giving birth, or a constant diet of Mexican food. It seems like people who work in offices look the same age as our parents, and people who work weird jobs and have crazy schedules where every day is different stay youthful indefinitely. Not a hard and fast rule of course but you won't catch me dead in a cubicle. I digress...

We spent all morning reading and listening to records and after bribing Ruby to 'nap' by promising her a lollipop I sneaked in a lifesaving shower and was busted by Evan talking on the phone in my birthday suit. Ruby and I watched the rain from the front porch and she dashed around getting muddy and singing rain songs while I drank really strong coffee and Jesse slumbered like only darling dimpled babies can.

After a late lunch of leftover fried fish we pumped up the beefy tires of our monster truck rally pull-wagon and set off for an adventure to the second hand store. (a million miles away and uphill) Mommy worked off the fish and any extra moisture she may have had stored up, we counted kitties and only stole one flower. I dragged the lot into the glorious coolness of Savers and Ruby clambered out to inspect all breakables. We did find some treasure in the form of a new ( too pink for my taste ) hat for Rubes, a bag of various polished rocks and crystals, a seafoam saki tea set with little coy fish chopstick rests, some strange Japanese bendy toys with pop off hairdos, an awesome vintage cat night light and a throw pillow with the two colors of our mismatched couches that, to quote The Big Lebowski "Really tied the room together."

Collect All 3!

Monkey Ruby, Elephant Ruby, and the extremely rare and valuable Hangover Barbie Ruby?

How to Make a Friend, by Ruby

• blow bubbles on the porch
• crayola party on giant paper
• rock out on the drums
• share goldfish crackers
• Nintendo
  
• hunt for eggs in the hen house
• chase chickens
• chase fluffy cats with grumpy faces
  

• 
  

Secret Groceries with Wolfie

Today I went on an adventure with Wolfie, a.k.a. Stevie, a.k.a. Orange Ryan *rowr. We've been talking about it for awhile, but we finally descended upon The Restaurant Supply Store, the one with guards at every door to keep non-members from catching a glimpse of the cornucopia of discounted 20lb cheese wheels, buckets of mole, boxes of turkeys and a lifetime supply of fortune cookies.

It was exclusive, it was magical, it was NOT kid friendly. It was tempting to pile 10lbs of frozen raspberries onto our train car that we were pushing through the aisles but no way would it fit in my freezer. I ended up with a case of topo chico, a giant box of tilapia filets, three industrial cans of black beans, tomatillos, and green chiles, extra large bottle sweet red chile sauce, concentrated chai and acai. Ryan and I also split a hunk of white farm cheddar the size of Jesse's torso.

I kept imagining that the legit resturaunteurs were seeing right through my farce and whispering my guilt to the authorities but they were probably just staring at me because of my dumb shorts or something. DON'T wear shorts here by the way. The section where they keep meats and cheeses is colder than a witch's well, you know. It is so cold that they actually provide puffy orange coats for you to wear while perusing their giant dead pig selection. (see photo discreetly snapped on Ryan's telephone)

Anyway, we got away with it and you are all invited to eat black bean green chili at my house because we will never again run out of black beans. Also, in case of a zombie invasion I will swing by your place in my stolen UPS van full of guns and we can all go live at the Restaurant Supply Store like kings.

I won't even mention the additional adventure of Stallion BBQ and the waitress on meth. It's past my bedtime.




*Ruby has called him Orange Ryan since she was a baby, mistaking him for Orange Lion

Rubylou, my doo

Aaaaaaand, Ruby. Wild and beautiful and devilish, she sometimes resembles a chubby gazelle. She enjoys singing, dancing, bossin', spitting out perfectly good food, memorizing Dr. Seuss, climbing furniture and people, play-actin', 'peel eggs', rock shows, cat videos, cheese, apple juice, Bjork-worthy costume changes and animated films.

Jungledog Alabama

Meet Jesse 'The Jungleman'. He's handsome, blonde, and a baby comedian. He enjoys rearranging videos, recycling, melting hearts, dancing, snuggling, swimming and cardboard novelas about safari animals.








thanks felicia for the photo candy

Mermaids and Monkeybusiness

Today I thought it would be fun to capture Ruby in one of her many costumes, of which she usually averages three a day. Earlier she was in and out of cardboard boxes. "I'm not Ruby, I'm a baby raccoon." Turns out, if you call bananas 'raccoon food' it's a whole lot easier to get them into her mouth. Later she donned the mermaid costume and even let me brush her hair. After much wrestling with unresponsive cameras and swearing under my breath I managed to take a few (on Evan's ipod) of the naughty thing in the POOL, which of course she jumped into as soon as my back was turned, silk costume, diaper and all. Jesse the nudi joined the fun after his fake nap, and I've never seen any creatures have such a good time in just two inches of water.

The Beginning

So, here goes. I'm diving headfirst into the internet, after a decade of technology denial, sporadic blog posts for the grandparents, and halfhearted dabbling on the social networking sites I am joining the ranks of daily bloggers. I don't even like the word blogger. Sounds like something that you shouldn't look at in your kleenex, then you do anyway. But! I want to become a better writer and photographer, and to document the daily life of my kids before they run off with a rock band like I did.

For my friends who have no interest in children, never fear! I hope also to fill this space with photos, art, comics, videos, music, weird outfits and awesome recipes. Wish me luck, camadres.