From our home to yours,

I am very late on sending out my Christmas cards. So I am sticking these in and making them Holiday cards..

Mrs.J

The first ever...

Wow! I am working on taking down my Christmas decorations today. I have most everything done except for a few things I need Todd's help in putting away. Alas, he went golfing with our neighbor so I am taking a break and sitting down to blog about our wonderful Christmas. It is always sad to put all of the decorations away for the next 11 months. After having almost every nook and cranny stuffed with garland, snowflakes and lights my house seems really bare. Maybe this will give me a jump start to adding some more decorations.

So we had our first Christmas together as a family. It was incredible. My family and Todd's family all came together to celebrate our first Christmas by spending it in Queen Creek with us. We had so much fun and seriously stuffed every day with Christmas events. Over the last few years the McLarty's have created a few Holiday traditions and this year was no exception. I wish I had taken more pictures but hosting a major holiday is craziness. When you are the one doing everything, you don't have time to take pictures. But let me tell you about a few of our Christmas traditions.

1) The McLarty-Jaramillo Annual Gingerbread House Build Off
This tradition has really taken shape over the last two years. It is part Iron Chef part Food Network Challenge and 100 percent super fun. We put everyone's name into a bowl and pulled out teams randomly. Since there was one extra person we put Team 1 and Team 2 into a bowl and pulled out who got the extra person. Katie put together the "secret ingredients" we had to use. These we pick out and don't come in the gingerbread house kit. They always are pretty crazy and require extra creativity. This year Katie picked out brussel sprouts, oatmeal, rice and tortilla chips. Then we had one hour to assemble them and move them to the judging table. Our neighbors Nick ans Sara came over to judge the homes when they were done. Team 2 was victorious! I think our cute snowman was what did it for the judges.

2) McLarty-Jaramillo Christmas Corn Hole Tournament
This is actually a new tradition to this year, but it was so much fun I know it is going to be a staple at probably every holiday we do. Todd first played corn hole in Iowa in college and after playing recently with our neighbors Pam and Time he decided he needed to make his own corn hole set. He found a set of instructions online and with a little elbow greased made his very own personalized set. Did you think he would put anything other than Angel's logos on there? We had a few tournaments that weekend. Todd and I even won one together!

3) Tamales
My family has been making tamales at Christmas time for over 10 years now. We love to sit around the table and just laugh while we make a huge batch of tamales. When we were younger we would put all the extras into the freezer. Now we split them up amongst ourselves. My tamales are almost gone. I love to eat them with eggs at breakfast time. When our families spent our first Christmas together in 2008 we taught Todd's family how to make tamales. This year we had a little throw down with our neighbors Pam and Tim. They didn't know when they agreed to it that we had been making them for that long. I think we might have won that one, although Pam and Tim's were really yummy too! Next year we want to make them all together.


All in all it was just an amazing, incredible and lovely Christmas. The weather was lovely and company was even better. On Christmas morning Todd and I recorded all the fun gifts that our family opened instead of taking pictures. I want to try and put them together in one video because, I have to say, Santa was very, very, very good to me this year. Now I am relaxing a little before heading to my sisters' house to ring in the New Year. What a year 2010 was!

-Mrs.J