Christmas

To say the last week has been a marathon of celebrations is almost an understatement. Reed has been quite the social butterfly and is now a very experienced party hopper. It was a great week of spending time with friends and family and isn't even over yet, but I just had to start sharing some of the fun we've been having.

We started off our week of craziness by hosting an "Iron Chef" competition between our good friend Clint and Pepe last Thursday. Jon, Nonna, Clint's parents, and myself were the judges and although it ended in a tie we decided we all had won because the food was so amazingly good!

Reed preparing to be a judge for next year's competition

On Friday we started our Christmas festivities. First Reed and I went to Amanda's for a Christmas lunch with Lee.

Reed and his Aunties

After our yummy lunch we headed to my parents' house for some Christmas baking (we actually missed the baking and aw shucks just had to do the tasting) and to meet Aunt Laurie and Uncle Peter.

Reed and his Grand-Aunt Laurie

Our day of fun continued when we had dinner over at Chelsea and Drew's to celebrate Nonna's Birthday.

Reed loved Nonna's Birthday Hat

The next day was Christmas Eve and we spent part of the day over at Pepe and Nonna's having a nice McClarty/Ketelsen Christmas celebration.

We got back to our house just in time for my family to show up for our annual Minestrone dinner (Momma Joan does all of the cooking which makes hosting a pretty easy job).

It looks like the adults weren't the only ones that overate!

Two babies, too much fun!!!

After everyone left we picked up a bit and got the house ready for the next day . . . Reed's first Christmas. I really wanted to start the tradition of opening pajamas on Christmas Eve night, hopefully my kids won't hate me for this, but the thought of having an annual pajama picture is just too hard for me to resist, I got Jon to go along with the idea as long as we didn't have to have matching jammies.

1st Annual McClarty Pajama picture

We had told both sides of our family our plan to have a mellow Christmas morning at our house and if they wanted to come over they could. I think the baby was just too hard to stay away from, so we ended up doing breakfast for 11 adults. We didn't need to worry about entertainment - Reed and Annaliese took care of that.

Uncle Jon holding his niece for the first time

After everyone left we got ready and headed over to Aunt Penny and Uncle Mark's for the afternoon. The conversation once again centered around the two little ones and my cousins Melissa and Greg decided they feel more like an Aunt and Uncle to the babies so we came up with knew monikers for them . . . Auntie "M" and Hunky Greg!!!

Reed and his color-coordinated Auntie "M" and doing a good job distracting our hosts

The last stop of the day was Jon's Aunt Paula's house for the annual McClarty gift exchange. This side of the family has quite a few little ones. It was so much fun to see them running around and building a massive fort in the living room, I can't wait for Reed to be able to join in.

2nd Cousins

Pepe showing Reed off to Uncle Allan and Uncle Tim

On Monday the festivities continued when we got together to celebrate Papa's Birthday and since we weren't able to make it to Dos Palos on Christmas Eve we got to exchange presents with everyone too. Unfortunately I think I had tired of taking pictures by this point. I at least had Pepe take a picture of Papa and his Grandchildren (and Great Grandchild):

If this doesn't sum up how we felt after this crazy week,

I'm not sure what will