Every year for the past few years we have made tamales around the holidays with my Dad's side of the family which has turned into a great Villanueva tradition. A tradtion with lots of messy fun and a yummy reward to show for it. We only do it once a year because if you don't know already making tamales is very labor intensive and rather involved. So last Saturday once all the family arrived at our house we got started with the Tamale lovin. This year we Ashlynn, Emma, and I watched the Pollocks girls on the same day that we made tamales. We thought that it was going to be hard to make tamales and watch the girls but it wasn't at all! It ended up being great fun for everyone. Before we started making tamales me and Madelynn did interprutive dancing to "Once Upon A Dream" from Sleeping Beauty which made her very happy and I couldn't complain either. She had a nice pretty pink dress and I only had my apron. When I sat down because I didn't have a pretty dress to dance around in she tugged on my apron and told me that was my dress. So I used my imagination and we had a grand time.
Finally we got started with the actual tamale making. My job for the past few years has to mix the masa and so that I did again this year. With help my my little friend Madelynn and cousin Jordan. It's a very hands on process but we knew what we were doing. I would also just like to quickly point out that Ashlynn wasn't really helping she just stuck her fingers in the masa for the picture.
Once the masa was ready to go everyone started wrapping and making tamales. Which was messy but it brought joy to all of us except for aunt Maria who can't spread the masa for her life. 
Mean while Madelynn and Catherine were using another tamale table as a jungle gym and were having a great time. Then Catherine decided that she wanted me to hold her so I did but it was the right thing to do. And Madelynn had a dress photo shoot with Ashlynn. 
Then their parents showed up and they had to leave but all together it was a good day with the girls. So once all the tamales were done all we had to do was wait for them to cook, and wait, and wait, and wait, but that's okay because in the mean time Emma Ashlynn and I sang ABBA songs to Steven and Jake who pretended to hate it but they really didn't. Then played rock band because Jake and Steven thought that sounded like a great idea. After hours of waiting the Tamales were finally ready (I didn't take pictures because we were all eating and bonding and such). 
When we were packing up the tamales we found out that we had made over 300 and there was no room in our frig for all of that love so we had to spread it around and took some to the Rays and Thad and Brittany. No complaints there I hear. So there it is that would be the great Tamale and Babsitting day.
