Oates', Newton's & West's in the Shire.

Last night we had a very last-minute Christmas dinner party. It started out as get together for dinner with the West's, since we haven't seen them in FOREVER. Neither of us wanted to get sitters for the kids and it is so hard to have a conversation with other adults if you go out to dinner with the kids, because you are constantly trying to keep a rodeo under control.

In the end, we decided to have them over to our house for dinner.

This lead to the invitation of the Newton's and the Oates' as well (literally, the day of).

It turned out well. The dinner was a little "well-done", because we were trying to keep it warm while every one of the other families struggled to navigate through our neighborhood to find our house. But it wasn't really about the food anyway (except for the dessert that Jon's wife made that was "out of this world" delicious!). It was all about the company and catching up with old friends. One of the funniest parts of the conversation was when we started talking about all of the funny first names that we could give our children. All of us have unique-ish last names. Newton's talked about how they loved the first name: Isaac, but thought it would be setting the bar a little high for that kid. West's mentioned the name: Easton. Hilarious! Nick still thinks it would be great to give one of our potential children the middle name: Del, because that means "of the"- in Spanish. So our kid would be: Joe "of the" Shire. I'm still laughing from all of the good conversation. And just like in High School the guys started pulling out the "one liners" from popular sitcoms of our "era"- ie- Seinfeld, and The Simpson's. It was a great night.

Santa made a surprise visit. That Santa Claus looks an awful lot like my little brother, Brian! Maybe that is why Jenny was so fond of him. Ha Ha.

This little guy didn't know what to make of Santa? What a handsome boy.

Reagan surprised me. This is the girl who will walk up to total strangers in the grocery store and want them to pick her up. But with Santa was not as social. Once again it proves what a mean Mom I am because I got a kick out of the fact that I now have a picture of Reagan sitting on Santa's lap crying!

She was happy to see Santa go. This picture is blurry, but it is because Reagan was so animated about waiving goodbye to Santa.

Reagan was the only one of the kids who didn't like Santa. It was a real treat to have him come, Brian was such a good sport about it.

The night was a success. It was sad to see it end. We can't let another 4 years pass before we do it again!