Justice Dept. approves United-Continental merger

According to USA today, Continental and United airlines won Justice Department approval of their proposed merger on Friday, after agreeing to lease landing and takeoff rights at Newark Liberty International Airport to discounter Southwest Airlines.

Justice said late Friday that it has closed its antitrust review of the United-Continental merger because it is satisfied with the carriers' deal to reduce their combined market dominance and increase competition at Newark. Continental currently operates a hub there and has the largest market share in the greater New York air travel market, the USA's largest. In addition to Newark, New York is served by LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports. Together United and Continental currently offer 442 daily flights at Newark.

Becca's Trip to Europe

I dropped Rebecca off at the airport this morning for her trip to Europe. There are 12 students and two adults going off on the trip. Rebecca is very excited and has been looking forward to this for a long time.

At becca's concert.

Checked in at the colorado springs airport. So far it looks like my flights are on time today.Wish me luck.

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Made it safely to colorado. Its snowing. I don't think i will be doing much site seeing this week.

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Winter Comes to Alabama

Winter has officially come to Alabama. Like much of the nation, Alabama is in the middle of a deep freeze and today the freeze was reinforced with some snow. The schools sent the girls home at noon today and they decided to take advantage of the snow with a bit of frolicking. Molly is refusing to have anything to do with the snow refused to leave the house all day.

Snug Wow

What do you get if you mix together a Snuggie and a Sham Wow. Watch the video and find out. This is hilarious.

Outback Bowl Half Time Show

Scribbles and her marching band performed as part of this years Outback Bowl Half Time Show in Tampa Florida. There were approximately 2000 performers including marching band members, color guard, and dance teams. The bands performed a number of Beach Tunes. The only downside was the unseasonably cold temperature and rain. The show was great though.

Outback Bowl Parade

The night before the Outback Bowl the band marching in the Outback Bowl parade where they were declared the parade grand champions!

Half time at outback bowl

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Busch Gardens - Tampa style

Even though Wednesday was zoo day, we could not keep Jake from playing with the animals.  Today he was practicing his grooming techniques with the chimps.  We were suprised to find that Busch Gardens had such a wide selection of animals to see.  Typically people relate the Amusement park with their rides.  The most popular at Busch Gardens Tampa are:  Gwazi (wooden roller coaster), Kumba (roller coaster), Rhino Rally (safari ride), SheiKra (coaster), and Montu (coaster).  Jake was brave enough to try SheiKra and Kumba with friends - Molly and Sarah cheered them on!  We hear that Scribbles is trying out Gwazi as this is being written!

This white tiger had us covered - literally.  The tiger enclosure had a really cool feature - you could go under it and pop your head up in a plexi-glass box in the enclosure.  It just so happened that there was a tiger laying on the box while we were inside it... we got an interesting picture of a tiger belly.  All the while the tiger just laid there looking a bit bored.

Jake got this shot of the full moon over the Morocco Palace.  We had just finished catching a few of the musical shows offered in the park when we looked up, and there was the moon begging us to take its picture.  It was a stellar -or lunar- way to end a busy day.

Tampa Critters

On our first full day in Tampa, Jake, Molly and Sarah went to the Lowry Park Zoo while Scribbles did whatever the band was doing.  We found some cool critters there.  Jake was racing through the zoo trying to see everything.  We got him to slow down long enough to make friends with a few sting rays though.

So we can only assume this guy is thinking "What's the deal with all the unhairy critters looking at me?"

We wanted to include Scribbles today since it is because of her we are in Tampa. She's somewhere in this photo of the band on the competition field. They put on a great show. We will find out tomorrow evening how they scored - the highest scoring band gets to do the pre-game show on New Year's Day. Cross your fingers!

Welcome to Florida!

Scribbles' band is competing in a competition in Tampa, Fl so the entire Pohick family decided that would be a great place for a getaway.  Little did we know in the planning stages that the trip would require a 3:30 AM wake-up and 4:30 drop off for Scribbles.  Since the rest of the family was up already, they took to the Pohick mobile and started their adventure - pausing only briefly on the 11 or so hour drive for this photo!

Christmas in Pohick

Merry Christmas from Pohick Ya'll.  We had a great Christmas this year.  We celebrated Christmas with a candlelight service at Messiah Lutheran Church in Madison, Alabama.  After church, it was home to hang the stockings by the chimney with care in hope that Saint Nicholas would soon be there.

The girls are obviously getting old because this year instead of waking up Jake and Molly, Jake and Molly had to wake up the girls. Jake waited until he just couldn't stand it any longer. After opening up some gifts, we celebrated with a traditional Christmas dinner of stuffed shells and garlic bread. What? Who says that isn't traditional. Since we had a large traditional turkey dinner while Jake's mother was here last week, we decided to have something just a little different. For the rest of the day, we just hung out and enjoyed each others company. A perfect Christmas.

To Boldly Go

While Grandma was visiting from Pittsburgh, PA, we didn't just make cookies the whole time.  We also did some of the touristy stuff in Huntsville, AL.  Our visits included the Galaxy of Lights and The US Space and Rocket Center.  While at the Rocket Center we received our very own VIP Tour from our very own personal VIP Tour Guide.  On Saturday we plan to head up to Burritt on the Mountain.

Cookies with Grandma

For the last several weeks, Grandma has been visiting us from Pittsburgh, PA.  We have enjoyed having her stay with us.  Last week she and the girls conducted a cookie making marathon.  They made sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, butter scotch cookies, peanut butter cookies, and gingerbread cookies.  Jake can eat a prodigious number of cookies, but even he has admitted that he has met his match.

Thanksgiving in Kansas

Turkey stuffing.  Who says TR doesn't have a sense of humor?  And he is a mighty fine cook as well.

Halloween 2009

Alas another Halloween has come and gone in Pohick. It was a good year though. Last year we only had 27 Trick or Treaters. This year we more than doubled the number of ghoulies and ghosties with 66. There were two really large groups who came as a pack.  Safety in numbers I guess.

So what was new this year you may ask.  Well, First we added 7 new songs to the sound track.  These songs included:

• A Nightmare On My Street
  
• This Is Halloween
  (Nightmare Before Christmas)
• Ghostbusters (From "Ghostbusters")
  
• Thriller
  
• Werewolves Of London (LP Version)
  
• The Purple People Eater
  
• Love Potion Number 9 

Next we synchronized the light display with our updated soundtrack.  We also added a new fog machine.  The old one hadn't been working right for a couple of years.  We also added some plastic but realistic looking Jack-O-Lanterns.  Many of the folks who stopped by commented that Jake had the best decorated house in the neighborhood. This of course went straight to Jake's head and he is already trying to figure out what he can do next year to top this year's "Show". Hmmmm... Does anyone know if it is legal to import live vampire bats? Gonna have to think about that for a bit.

The view from my hotel room in denver.

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A River Runs Through It

When we first arrived in Alabama two years ago, the state was in the middle of an extended drought.  According to the US Drought Monitor, the drought in our area has been over officially for quite some time now.  After the rain we been having this month, we have decided to endorse the US Drought Monitor assessment.  The little trickle of a stream behind our house has been busting at it's seams the last while.  We considered going rafting in the stream, but there have been too many stories in the news lately about folks being sucked into drainage pipes.  We decided that as much fun as rafting in the stream would be, it would be awfully embarrassing to end up as a statistic on the nightly news.  I guess we really haven't hit the 40 days and 40 nights stage yet, but it is starting to feel like that.