A Great New Year’s Day

In spite of fireworks going off in the neighborhood we both went right to sleep and even managed to sleep in this morning. 

Michael and I took Emmi for a walk around the neighborhood and we began to make plans for the day.  The guys helped Nicole transfer vehicles around and also helped her with some furniture and boxes. 

The menu for tonight was pork tenderloins which I started marinating, black eyed peas, cabbage, homemade macaroni and cheese, cornbread and homemade bread for Rollie (the rest of us got to sample some too).  While we were busy cooking all the above I decided to make spaghetti sauce, too.  The house smelled wonderful!

Dana (Rollie’s sister) and her husband Ricky, Nicole, Ashley and Parker all joined us for dinner tonight.  Rollie and Gina—you raised great kids—easy to talk to, friendly, wonderful sense of humor—you should be very proud of them! 

While we were cooking and Gina was taking down Christmas decorations, I worked on Ellie’s quilt—hand sewing the binding—I am just a little over half way done, YEA!

Today was a good beginning for 2011!

Uncle Jim’s cabbage he raised which we cooked tonight—that was one big cabbage!

A King Cake—a Louisiana tradition.  Usually sold around Mardi Gras time, see the plastic baby sitting on the edge of the cake—in times past the plastic baby was buried inside the cake and whoever got the piece which contained the baby hosted the next King Cake party.  Here is a link to the history behind King Cakes. 

Emmi was saying all day, “Mommmmm, she has my duck.” 

The guys grilling the meat or shall we say, Rollie grilling the meat and Michael supervising??

This is the first time in my adult life that I have not sent Christmas cards.  I toyed with the idea of sending New Year’s cards but decided against that too.  Today I thought about writing a recap of this year’s blogs and maybe over the next few days I will get around to that, maybe not!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!