Author: jennmariecuisine

We hope this greeting finds you and your family JOYful and healthy. 2019 was a busy year for JAM and a year of really settling into Reno life. My personal focus word for the year was JOY (Jesus, Others, then YOU) and if you saw my million FB posts, the mood was always finding JOY in whatever was going around our lives.

Early in 2019 we visited Ohio to co-host the wedding shower for my youngest sister Beckey, and since the visit was just before Audriana turned one, so we celebrated that as well! Back in Reno, we hosted a ONE singular sensational party for Audriana at our home with lots of sparkles, family and friends! A few weeks after she turned one she took her first steps and has been climbing stairs, playing in the parks and keeping us on the move since then. Audriana knows all her colors, she’s starting to learn the ABCs and knows how to recognize counting just about anything. She takes swimming once a week and really loves the water. She’s grown out of anything under 24 months and we’ve officially retired the onesies. This is where I start to cry. Lol. Every time I rotate her clothing sizes up I think, another stage gone by. It’s been a true gift to be at home with her for every stage. She’s just amazing to watch embrace the world around her with curiosity, focus and excitement. And so it goes on…

In March we headed back out to Ohio again to be a part of Beckey and Alex’s wedding. Jenn as matron of honor and Michael as a groomsman. Audriana took part by looking absolutely adorable in her beautiful matching color dress. The wedding weekend was amazing and it was great to see our entire family and friends together. It was two very busy visits but as usual we managed to squeeze it all in making sure to see as much of the family as possible and have some fun with local hometown activities. Like pierogies, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Football Hall of Fame. Good times!

We had many visitors this year, taking advantage of exploring the Reno and Tahoe area with them when here. Grandma came to visit us in July for 10 days and we kept ourselves busy during her visit! There is always a festival, an event or activity going on every week near to where we live.  

In August we took our first JAM family vacation traveling to Kauai for 12 days. Well it was seven, but we lost a day with flight challenges, so we very quickly on the trip decided to stay longer. Great choice! We LOVED the garden isle and took advantage of all the beauty and activities it had to offer. With a toddler you can imagine that meant scheduled naps, lots of snacks, and activities! Audriana was really the dream traveler (it must just be in her) adjusting easily to delayed flights, time changes and very full days. We took her to a Luau with fabulous entertainment (like a production theater show) which she fell asleep during, a helicopter ride which she fell asleep in and many car rides to Waimea Canyon, Wailua Falls, Hanalei Bay and around the island, where she was just a happy girl in the car or out. She especially LOVED all the birds and enjoyed feeding them.

We all loved the beautiful scenes of Hawaii- the beach, the blue waters, the green palms. We found Kauai to be slow paced (yay!), on the quiet side, super family focused, delicious food (and drinks) and friendly people.

We appreciated the Mahalo culture and found ourselves feeling at home after a few days. One of the special things we did was to take our annual family photos, in 100% Hawaiian made outfits on Poipu Beach, where we resided during our visit. The pictures came back just amazing! We absolutely loved Kauai and we plan to visit again.

We celebrated Halloween this year with our first annual fun festive and fearful party! Audriana did pretty well with Halloween, minus the part of the animatronics and daddy as Pinhead. She was the cutest little witch and we worked with her for weeks to get used to the idea of wearing a hat, costume, and broom. We had many Halloween celebrations to practice with.

We’ve all been getting more involved in our local churches with bible studies, play groups and organizations. Michael was recently initiated into the Knights of Columbus and since June I have been keeping busy with bible studies and groups with Audriana at my side for all sorts of outdoor and indoor fun with friends. Friends is one of Audriana’s most common words. That and “oats”, “no”, “ok”, “busy”, “come on”, “I do”, “funny”, “ice”, “cookie”, “read”, “mommy”, “daddy” and since a few months ago, her name. She’s just blowing us away with her understanding, expanding vocabulary and has quite the memory of what’s happening around her.

Both Michael (in March) and I (in June) rang in the Big 5-0 with fun celebrations and getaways. I was blown away by Michael’s surprise Lake Tahoe party having no clue what was up until the actual “surprise” moment. Both birthdays were adventures with snow tubing, bowling, games, exploring activities both in Tahoe and Reno. There’s never a lack of things to do.

Michael and I are still exploring what’s next for us, with Michael achieving his CPA for Nevada, making him licensed in both CA and NV. In JAM Team Ventures (our LLC) we purchased land and had it developed with a new manufactured home on the land, with Michael and our partner and friend taking a lead in all the activities. Michael is trying to golf more and is getting involved in the golf club in our community. We are both staying busy looking at what is next. Stay tuned…

That about wraps up the highlights of our year. We’ve celebrated holidays with friends locally and feel so blessed to have met so many wonderful people.

Reno has truly become our home and we love living here.

We are happy to be home for the holidays this year and we always welcome visitors to come and see us!

We wish you a JOYful 2020 and a beautiful Christmas season!

Love, JAM

Jennifer ~ Audriana ~ Michael

PS: I post frequent updates on Audriana and our Reno adventures so if you are on Facebook or Instagram, feel free to friend me on FB or follow me on Instagram. 

How exciting it was for us to gather our California family and friends together to reveal LBP (Little Baby Pelfini)! To us, the party represented so much after many transitions during our first year of marriage – a true reason to celebrate life! The party was also a week after we celebrated our first anniversary.

Early on the theme presented challenges. I mean where in the world do you find a pink crab? And a blue fish that is NOT Nemo? Thank goodness for the ability to search and buy anywhere! We put months of work into developing the party theme, concepts and purchases, nothing too small to disregard. All things equal blue AND pink. Even down to every other napkin, every other plate!

Meanwhile, on the little one… Earlier that week we received good news, the final hurdles of fetal tests and screens came back all positive and we were moved from the high risk to low risk category. Huge big sigh of relief! Some of this is because of AMA (eeks, Advanced Maternal Age), and some is just general health stuff they were watching. The week after the party we had an echocardiogram and that went well too. Although another visit to the fetal specialist warned against a planned trip to Hawaii for our Babymoon in October (yes it’s a thing), we quickly adjusted our plans to Scottsdale. But getting ahead here, back to the party…

There was one surprise I was not expecting (thank you Michael, the ultimate secret keeper) when my also pregnant-sister Beckey (due 4 weeks after me) shocked me by walking up the porch stairs on the day before the party, completely blowing my mind away. She flew in from Ohio as a total surprise and was the best gift I could have received- Michael agreed. Getting to share pregnancy moments together and some “bump” photos is something we will both always cherish. She also ended up being so instrumental in helping us execute the final setting up and decorating. As usual, the aggressive vision exceeded the timeline to make it all happen. Hey, that’s what marketers do! But working together, we were able to get it all done. In fact, we were feeling good a few minutes before the party even started. Whew!

We didn’t tell anyone what we had planned for the party. I tried my best to be the secret keeper on the details (this is no challenge for Michael). We wanted the element of surprise to be there too, to make it special. Our invitation, “You are Invited to Sea What LBP Will Be…”, included showcasing a pink crab (girl) and blue fish (boy) for a reason. But you’d have to know us really well as to why (no one at the party could guess that either). LBP is an Aquarius baby (if she’s any bit on track for her delivery date early Feb!). Michael is a Pisces and I am a Crab. We both love the ocean and the water. So we figured naturally LBP will love all that too… We turned our home into a fun sea scene, inside and outside of the house.

Surprises to our guest included a full-on wine tasting and charcuterie from our local wine shop, and a taco truck in our front yard! I’ve heard people say it was some of the best Mexican food they have had. We agree!

So many highlights and moments to the party. Michael’s heartwarming speech brought tears to my eyes– also recognizing the love of his mother and her missing presence; our past and present plans for our home with our family; and the eyes and hearts of all at the party. It was quite overwhelming, with around 90 people at our home, but no doubt a day we will love to share with LBP. A lasting memory of the party will land on her nursery wall, as we had our guests write one word they would like LBP to know on a canvas we will have framed… and in the middle of the canvas, her first initial making it a timeless piece.

Ah the good stuff, we revealed we are having a girl! Both Michael and I were surprised. He never guessed and I was pretty much thinking boy. But we’ve been so wrong on guessing genders lately! We also revealed the first initial of her name to be “A”. Yes we have a name picked out. At the party we were still debating our very small shortlist (we had a very shortlist for a boy as well also with A), but we are now talking to her by her name and we can’t wait for you all to meet her soon. Why did we pick “A”? We really like being JaM, which as you know, represents Jennifer and Michael, but now we have a really meaningful “A” that unifies us all as a family. Awwww, right? That’s what we thought.

The main event in February will be the next big reveal… what is her name Baby Girl A? You can guess, but we won’t tell. It’s fun to have a little secret!

Since our love for the water and ocean is something we can both agree on, Baby Girl A’s nursery will be an ocean theme. I’ve been planning and reviewing concepts and ideas with Michael and we’ve started making our first purchases. It’s so exciting! Never a dull moment.

We wanted to especially thank you for all your love and support! LBP/Baby Girl A is one lucky baby. A life filled with love is all you can ask for. We are truly blessed with that and Baby Girl A is feeling the love already. Yep, she’s swimming in her pond, hitting walls occasionally. Uh, I mean kicking and moving around. We think she’s happy. We know we are!

Team JaM thanks the following services that made our party fabulous and we are pleased to support and to recommend:

• Wine tasting: Bacchus Wine and Spirits Shop (Millbrae, CA)
• Fabulous mexican food, tacos and nacho bar: El Norteno Catering (fantastic “taco truck” experience and then some!) (San Francisco, CA)
• Flavored cupcakes: Sweet Dreams Bakery Shop (Colma, CA)
• Decorations: Diddam’s Party Store (San Mateo, Daly City)
• Amazon: everything else random that we needed: sea scene, inflatables, pink crab and blue fish

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We kust love how Blue Sky Elopements shared “our story” to inspire others to make this journey. It was a sweet reflection of our experience. Memories to certainly always be cherished…and we are excited to share them.

 

What a year for growth 2016 was for our families. We added new family members with a new niece, Olivia, born at the end of May, and a new nephew Hunter and sister-in-law Melissa in October when my brother was married in Palm Harbor, Florida. And of course a new brother-in-law with Michael. It’s an exciting time to see our family grow!

We all reunited at Christmas to share our wedding experiences with our families and friends to celebrate in Ohio. Michael’s family was able to join the party as well with family in attendance from both Ohio and in making the trip to see us from Pennsylvania. It was a fabulous day of laughs and reunions. Besides lovely cake, we had incredible local faire food with plenty of Polish, Italian and Czech classics to eat. We also had some major laughs and moments of glee with a “white elephant” exchange, where the $5 or less gifts went the range of a lava lamp, to drinking straw glasses, to toilet paper and everything cute and fun in between. Ah you gotta love the humor in our family…

Family and friends pitched in to help and host – and the results were a very special evening. Not many times in our lives we get the joy of having most of the family in the room. For this day, and this reason, it was a very special occasion! We only wish we had more time. It was a true blessing to be with everyone.

On the behalf of all of us (Michael, myself, Philip and Melissa and the Houdek family) thank you for being a part of our journey!

Photos courtesy of Tamara Koski.

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Video of fun “white elephant” gift exchange!

It is with my heartfelt sadness to share with you that Michael’s dear mom, Stephenie Marie Pelfini passed away on Thanksgiving, November 24th, 2016. We were with Mom at her bedside when she took her last breath. It was a beautiful experience.

Stephenie was a true light in life, she loved her life and her family and friends, travelled the world, and was an energetic soul who always brought her own happiness to everyone and anyone who knew her.

We were so very fortunate with the gift of her in our lives and being a part of our wedding was so very important to her- we had both of our mothers sign the marriage certificate. We were truly blessed on that day with her in attendance. She celebrated with us and couldn’t be happier that her son had found the love he was seeking. I couldn’t have asked for a better mother-in-law who I shared a kindred spirit with.

Honoring her life has been the greatest responsibility of love we’ve had together.  Join us visiting her online memorial—  Stephenie’s services and Life Celebration information are found here. (Thursday December 1 and Friday December 2).

As a part of celebrating her life, we are asking friends to share memories of her on her memorial website, and also, as she held cards dear to her, to share a memory of her in a note and pop it in the mail, so Michael can have an ongoing memory of her. During services, the many cards she had in her home ready to send out at a moments notice, will be available and addressed to our home to easily mail.

We appreciate your love, prayers and sharing your memories of Stephenie with us, during this difficult time, and for the months and years to come, as each Thanksgiving we will remember her in a very special way, but every day, she lives on in our lives.

It’s hard to believe that one month ago we were on this day preparing to get married! We cherish every moment of that time…and reflect on the joy and love of it often…

When planning this event, every little detail, as in any wedding, became important. We’ve both planned many, many events before, but this one was on a compressed timeline, so decisions and commitments had to be made fast. The decision to get married soon, versus later, and finding an elopement package were the first step. And at this point, we started calling it the anti-elopement, as we realized we could not do this day alone, nor in our hearts, did we really wish to do so.

Quick phone calls and emails went out, confirmations were a day turn-around, guests booked flights and at the Inns, and we were on our way– keeping to the promise we made, that this was to be a small gathering, where we felt we could have the personal, intimate weekend we desired. It was difficult to do that, and hard to keep quiet, but the results were fantastic and we couldn’t have done it any other way for us.

Our day was amazing, but we never could have imagined, with all the planning we did, that the site- we never saw together before and discovered the specific spot in Berwick Park at the morning of our wedding, the Seven Gables Inn-we booked after only seeing online, and the team– we placed trust in all hired by our elopement coordinator from Blue Sky Elopements, could all turn out to create this magical, dreamy, fairy tale by the ocean experience.

I felt like Cinderella and Michael was certainly my Prince Charming. Our court was filled with love and support, with each person having a role that we, or they, could not have anticipated either. And those roles were incredibly important to us, beginning with the planning all the way to the arrivals, and through the day of…

Our day came together absolutely beautifully, and we are thankful to God that we were so very blessed.

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Stay tuned… we’ll be posting all of the amazing photos and video in the upcoming months. The photos on here so far are just a preview of what’s to come. We feel so amazingly blessed and are super pumped to be married! There are just no words to convey enough how incredibly amazing our experience was…

We both confessed when we met on match.com that we were tired of dating and “kissing the frogs” –as Michael likes to say. How we connected was kind of a crazy happening of events. I had just returned from a “heritage” trip to both Poland (I’m Polish) and Czech Republic (I’m Czech as well and went on this trip and had the opportunity to discover my grandfather’s birthplace and documentation). Tired of doing the online thing, I was intrigued by a pretty direct message from Michael who seemed really together. In his profile, he mentioned he was both Italian and Czech! I thought, who mentions they are Czech and I just returned from there- and a real Italian with roots in Italy? I had a feeling our values would be similar. Michael caught my attention and we traded emails trying to set up a time until we were able to meet. The timing was crazy, as during the end of my trip I was interviewing for a job with my dream company, resulting in a final interview upon my return and then to my delight, a job offer immediately following! My first conversation with Michael was in-between waiting for the offer call. We talked on the phone for over an hour and we both remember laughing and smiling during the all over the map chat- during which our call was interrupted with the good news I had the job. After that phone connection, we knew we had to meet! Between his trip to Tahoe, mine to Orlando and Memorial Day weekend, it took us a few weeks of patience to be able to meet.

Our first date was a few days after I returned from my first business trip with my new employer to Orlando. My suggestion was to meet somewhere on the water in SF. I picked Waterbar, he agreed. When we met on June 7, 2014, we both had that feeling, something was different here. This had potential to be something really good and lasting. I convinced him it was a good idea to take a photo. Michael was a a bit photo shy (having no idea then that I am a photo fanatic) but he agreed. We laughed, shared what we wanted in life, which to our surprise pretty much “matched” what we said on our profiles. An occurrence we both agreed was rare. Our date was amazing and magical in its own way. We enjoyed rounds of oysters and champagne and talked the entire time ending up closing Waterbar. Afterward we walked along the Embarcadero to the Bay Bridge lights dazzling and this random guy playing guitar, that to us, seemed like a private serenade!

Not wanting the date to end, we continued on to Route 101, a total dive bar, and jammed to some rock and heavy metal- Michael’s favorite and we both found out we love a good dive bar. After that date, we both knew more dates had to happen. And so they did! A month later (and no other dates in between with anyone else) we said, “this is it for me”. We committed to be with each other and in our minds and hearts, this meant eventually we would get married. Pretty crazy now thinking about the journey we’ve been on… but we both knew what we wanted, and we were willing to work together for a different kind of relationship, one that would grow, evolve and be forever.