Happy Earth Day!

Hello family!
As many of you may or may not know today is Earth Day!! Yay!!!
Now, what does that mean you might ask? Earth Day is a day to appreciate our earth!
We’ve got to start taking better care of our planet so we have something to leave our little ones and we need to start enjoying the great outdoors! The best thing you can do today is GO OUTSIDE!!! Enjoy nature, if you see some trash on the street, pick it up!(okay, use some latex gloves, yuck!) I challenge you to get started enjoying our planet! Below are some tips from the Nature Conservatory:

1. EXPLORE NATURE NEAR YOU.
2. FIND KID-FRIENDLY ADVENTURES. A trip to the zoo, playground or beach is way more
exciting than video games.
3. PLAN A PERFECT DATE NIGHT. Treat your special someone to a picnic in the park, an
outdoor concert, or some simple stargazing.
4. EAT HEALTHY, LIVE GREEN. With a backyard vegetable garden, you can eat well, save
money and help the environment.
5. ENJOY NATURE FROM A NEW PERSPECTIVE. Warm weather is perfect for kayaking,
canoeing or white water rafting.
6. DON’T FORGET FIDO. Walks outside are great exercise for you and your pet.
7. START A HEALTHY COMPETITION. Trade in office happy hour for kickball, flag
football or paintball challenges.
8. DE-STRESS FROM THE DAILY GRIND. Unwind from the 9-to-5 with bird watching, hiking
or sleeping under the stars.
9. GET FIT, HAVE FUN. Shake up your gym routine and shape up with jogging, walking,
hiking or biking.

My First Day Alone with Taiye

Well as many of you know by now, my husband and I have a beautiful baby girl! She is soooo cute if I must say so myself. Being a Mom is a new experience for me. My husband brought me all the books to help me get ready i.e. "What to expect when you're expecting", "The Pregnancy Journal" and "What to expect the first year". Of course I consulted all my Mom friends (April, Tonka, Jana, Lauren) to make sure I was fully prepared, but as they have told me over again, you're never fully prepared for Motherhood! So of course, I call in for reinforcement.My great Aunt Fedelma! Aunt Fedelma is our family matriarch. She is my paternal grandmother's sister who lives in Ohio. She's 84 years old but don't think her age dictates her livelihood. She has a full schedule. Aunt Fedelma goes to line dancing classes, aerobics, monthly bridge club meetings, vacations including cruises to Alaska and Panama. Wale and I were lucky to get her here to Jersey for the first week Taiye was home and let me tell you having her here was absolutely FABULOUS! Aunt Fedelma helped me to get acclimated to being a mother. She showed me how to effectively manage my time (something which I am very good at with IBM and Pooka but takes on a different spectrum with the role of mother). For example, Aunt Fedelma showed me how to take advantage of the little time I have i.e. when Taiye sleeps, I should sleep in order to get my rest and maintain my energy. She also taught me how after a feeding, burp her and put her down. Don't let her sleep to long in your arms or else when you try to put her down she will start crying. Take advantage of short pockets of time to get things done i.e. take a shower during her morning naps. This one I struggled with because I like taking long hot showers but as Aunt Fedelma says, "you are going to have to cut down on your shower time so you can get other things done." Having Aunt Fedelma here during the first week was wonderful, but now she's gone back to her life in Cleveland and it's just me and Taiye...the anxiety has already begun! Taiye woke up screaming bloody murder the day before Aunt Fedelma left as if she knew Aunt Fedelma was leaving. What am I going to do without Aunt Fedelma? How will I manage? I never realized how important it is having someone you trust to help you with a newborn. I'm not sure how Taiye and I are going to manage, but we will find a way! So begins, my first day alone with Taiye.

And the winner is.....

Well after loads of entries submitted, we randomly picked and the winner of our Organic Easter basket is............

Seskeia Gombs from Chesapeake, VA!!!!!

Now wait a minute everybody, don't go anywhere! Seskeia has tonight until midnight to contact us, if we don't hear from here there will be another winner chosen tomoroow, so.................SESKEIA we need to hear from you, LOL! Email us at info@pookapureandsimple.com to claim your basket!

Stay tuned for more contests and prizes......... Starting, today!

If you are in the New Jersey area email us and let us know that full names of all of the Pookalitas and you can win a free ticket to the VIP game lounge! Email us at info@pookapureandsimple.com, winner will be announced on Wednesday!
Check out the VIP Game Lounge event
at www.vipgamelounge.com

Say it aint so!

Well what can I say? The economy has finally caught up with me. On friday I got laid off.....................YES LAID OFF. My boss called me into his office and asked me how I was doing, I said fine except for a little cold I have from the kids, I asked him how he was doing and he said "Not so great, I have to lay you off." HUH? What? I couldn't really hear anything he said after that. "I know your upset, I'm upset too (your upset?) Wait, wait, wait a minute................did you just lay me off? "Here is your package blah blah blah, check to see if everything is alright (Uhm................NO EVERYTHING IS NOT ALRIGHT, YOU JUST LAID ME OFF!)The economy is really bad, he says..(No kidding and now your just adding to it.) I dropped a couple of tears, asked a couple of questions(I have no idea what they were) and left his office. In a fog I called my assistant to come into my office (oh no, not MY office, the company's office) and explained things to her. She started to cry, next thing I know I'm walking out of the building, away from a job that I actually liked and was really good at(Marketing Director). The weekend was a blur,(I was trying not to think about it) because that's what they are when you have kids and Monday morning saw me back at my house trying to make sense of it all. How was I going to pay the rent, buy food, clothes, take care of my kids, myself for that matter? I prayed and the spirit came over me, this is not the end of the world, God has other plans for me and just like that job came when I needed it, the next opportunity will come so I must be ready to meet it. Prayfully it will be OUR COMPANY POOKA and I can write about how we moved into our new office space! ( I still want a window with a view!)