Monday, December 21, 2009

Her First Holiday Turkey!!!


Greetings Family! Well we are into the holiday season full swing and boy am I tired!!! Now you know that the holidays are a Foodies favorite time of year. So many recipes so little room in your stomach to try them all! Well......I hosted Thanksgiving this year, at my house, for the first time. This was a major big deal. I thought, ok I have every magazine and cookbook and have watched all of the food network holiday specials two times. I can do this!! I also thought that I would start with a small gathering to ease myself into this tradition. Well the ghosts of Thanksgiving past decided that I should have a house full of people. Ok, plan B to have everyone contribute to the festivities so a Foodie like myself didn't have a melt down. My mother and I planned the menu and gave everyone their assignments. My mother, aka, hostess extraordinaire, helped with the decorating and table setting and seating as well. I have big shoes to fill to follow my Mom. She is my hostess and decorating inspiration in life!! I made my shopping list and hit the store. I must admit however, that I had never cooked a turkey before. How hard could it be. Just like a big chicken right!! Well this is where my mother-in-law came in to save me. She stayed with us over the holiday and cooked her famous potato salad and her greens and cakes. She showed me how to prep and season the turkey. She even got up early in the morning to put the bird in the oven so it would be ready for our company!! I am forever grateful to her for this lesson. Now that is the type of mother-in-law that I hope all of you have! I made glazed carrots, cornbread stuffing and my sweet potato pies! My aunties made baked salmon, sweet potatoes and string beans. Tricia baked us a ham (you must accommodate the pork eating guests!!) and made her fabulous desserts. Yummy!! My mother made fantastic herb roasted chicken and her famous macaroni and cheese. Now I must inform everyone that there was a near riot because my mother only had one pan because she left the other one home! We worked it out though and everyone had plenty. Dawn made her famous..... she whipped up some.....well Dawn brought the bread!! Our creative genius makes body butter not things with real butter in them lol! We prayed over the food and our home and everyone had a great time. Everyone stayed for a long time with their bellies very full which is the sign of a good holiday dinner. They left with plenty of food to take home for left overs. All in all, it was a very successful first Thanksgiving. I couldn't have done any of it without everyone's help. I also want to give a special thanks to my husband who moved more furtniture and hung more curtain rods then he thought possible. Thanks hubby!! Just in case you are wondering….we will be celebrating Christmas at my parents' house!! Here is wishing everyone a good eating, happy and healthy holiday!!!

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Flying the friendly skies



Well family Will and Wes took their first airplane ride for Thanksgiving two weeks ago and of course it went the way it usually goes......Crazy!!!
Our flight was at 6:30am so we had to get up by 4:30am, everyone was excited so they moved pretty quickly. We got to the airport's long term parking and ran for the bus to take us to the airport. (Now if you've ever run with small children more than likely your not gonna make it.) We missed the bus of course, but that was okay because 10 minutes later another one came.
We make it inside and wait on the longest line in the history of mankind, thats when people started getting a little antsy. "Why is this taking so long," " I'm hungry" "Why are all of these people here?" "I'm hungry"" Where is the plane?" "I'm hungry" So I just had to tune them out. Finally we get to the point where we have to take off our coats and shoes and put them and our luggage in a bin (easier said than done!) I had explained all of this before hand but of course nobody remembered....."Why do I have to take off my shoes?" "I'm cold I want to leave my coat on?"" This bag is heavy!" "I'm hungry". William finally got all of his stuff off and in the bin goes through the metal detector and makes it to the other side. Meanwhile I'm taking off mine and Wesley's sneakers, coats, and bookbags and trying to stop Wesley from running all the way past the other side without his sneakers, coat and backpack! Not to worry we get stopped on the other side because the x-ray picked up something in Will's backpack. As we are lead over to the side like common criminals Will is shouting at me "Why Mommy Why! What did you put in my backpack!"
Everyone is looking at us. Of course it was our snack bag, (which every good parent carries, if you care about your kids and your money!) all of our juices, chips and and sweetsnacks.While the agent explains that certain things can't go through, I hear another agent yelling "Who's luggage is this?" I look over and of course its mine, through all of the commotion I had forgotten to put my luggage on the belt. People started shrinking away from my luggage like it was a monster. " Its mine" I call out holding onto Wesley so he doesn't get away. Now I'm on one side and my luggage is on the other, you would think they would pick my luggage up and put it on the belt for me. NO the agents all just kind of stood there looking at it, finally another passenger picked it up and put it in a bin and sent it to me. (Thanks again guy!) We finally wrap up with the first agent (she let us keep our juices :)
make our way to the gate and got on our plane! Will and Wes were very good on the plane and were even able to sit in the cockpit, where they got their wings! I just decided not to think about the trip home!

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Our Family Vacation


Happy Thanksgiving Pooka Family! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. Wale, Taiye & I went on vacation right before Thanksgiving. Wale and I like going to non-traditional vacation spots i.e. for our honeymoon we went to Bali, then the following year we went to Phuket, Indonesia, but now that we have Taiye, we need to be a little more conservative with our choices so this year we went to Costa Rica. Taiye did great on the flight coming and going. When we touched down at our layover the gentleman behind us said that she was the best baby he'd ever flown with! While in Costa Rica, Taiye stole the show again! Every morning when we went to breakfast the hostess and the waitresses would come over and ask if they could take her while we were eating our breakfast. I let them take her but I told Wale to keep his eye on them! I made sure I took a picture of them because if our baby came up missing I knew who to look for!

Unfortunately we didn't get to do the things we normally like to do when we vacation like exploring the native country sites outside of the resort: the rainforest, visiting the volcano, horseback riding. Nevertheless, we had a wonderful time just being together as a family! I'm looking forward to next year's family vacation. If you've visited any baby-friendly or kid-friendly resorts please let me know!

Thursday, December 3, 2009

The more things change…..the more they CHANGE!


Well Pooka family this weekend we had our new Pookalita photo shoot!
We decided to do so after going to an event, putting up our official Pookalita
poster(above) and overhearing a young gentlemen saying “Well where are the girls in that picture?” DEVESTATING, LOL! Here we are putting up that photo everywhere we go and not even considering that it was 6 ½ years old. So, we decided to have a new and updated photo shoot. The morning of the shoot, we all met at Pooka and decided to re-do our old shoot. “No problem” we thought. Well after looking at the old pictures and looking in the mirror we all decided, THINGS had CHANGED! We donned our spanx, and stage make-up(things we didn’t need 6 ½ years ago) and sat in front of the camera. We tried to recreate our official Pookalita picture, but it seemed we weren’t even the same height anymore! Could osteoperosis have shrunk us already, its only been 6 ½ years! Then we decided to add the kids in the photo, only Will was here the first time, now there were 2 more! Where did they come from?! Well we sucked it in, held our breath and smiled and all in all we had a great day, but I think the statement now goes, “The more things change, they more they stay the same IN YOUR MIND!” Below are 2 pics from our new photo shoot, more to come!
ps. We saved our energy to do that one jumpy shot after that the shoot was OVER!LOL!