Christmas with the Smiths

**Warning** Long post ahead **Warning**

Well, our Christmas festivities started off the weekend before Christmas. We had our Christmas with Russell's family because his mom was having to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. So we hopped in our car on Friday after Russell got done with school and headed to Tyler. We got there and opened our fabulous presents (silly me didn't take a single picture). We then had traditional dinner of baked potato soup, sausage bread and salad. It was so good. I think I am going to make it through this whole pregnancy on potato meals alone! I love them! Anyways, after dinner we headed to Santa Land. I took some pictures there, but most of them didn't turn out so I found some online. Santa Land was really cool. It is pretty close to Lindale off I-20 in East Texas. It advertises to have around 2 million lights. It was unlike anything I have ever seen. I love Christmas lights so this was perfect! Here are some pictures of Santa Land.

-

This is the wreath you drive through to get in. It was really impressive.

A carousel made up of only lights.
A water faucet. This one was really cool it had a frog that would just into the water and then swim down the little light river.
This is the only picture that turned out well on my camera so I used it!
I loved the stocking. It had elves passing a present and throwing it into Santa's Stocking.
Russell and I were very impressed with Santa Land. It was really cool. We enjoyed our Christmas with my in-laws. They are always super fun. We enjoyed a great time with family and some pretty good presents as well! Thanks Smiths!

The Smith Christmas was just the beginning of many more Christmas parties. Saturday night we hung out with all 100 of my dads extended family. I knew about 20-30 of them and Russell knew about 15 by name. I have been going since I was little and I still don't know everyone I am related to. My papa is one of eight siblings I think, so this is the whole clan. I guess a big family is better than no family.

-

We came back to our apartment on Sunday and got ready for Christmas here. Russell spent Christmas Eve doing last minute stocking things with Santa as well as last minute runs to the store. My parents came up on Christmas day to eat lunch with us, but that is a whole other post. I spent Christmas Eve cooking, getting the table looking pretty and stashing things that didn't quite get picked up. I know that some of you know what I mean! We went to Texas Land and Cattle for our Christmas Eve dinner. We decided to go there because we hadn't celebrated the baby and it was Christmas Eve. Texas Land and Cattle is our favorite restaurant so we make it for celebrations.

-

Russell and I are as bad as little kids on Christmas. We woke up at like 6 but made ourselves stay in bed until 7 so we weren't quite as nerdy! So we got up and got ready to open our presents.
Here is our little tree that Santa had come and filled with lots of presents!

Santa went a little crazy on the stockings, but neither one of us seemed to care. (These are one of my favorite things about Christmas morning.)
This is our third Christmas being married and this is the first year Russell had wrapped my presents by himself. The first year it all came in bags, last year he got his Grandmother to wrap them and this year he took the plunge. I thought he did an excellent job. I was so excited to have wrapped presents!


This was my big present.
A new red camera!!
This was Russell's big present. I had disguised it in a bigger box because I didn't want him to know what it was just by looking at it.

This is his new toy, the iphone! He was soooooo excited!
Stocking time.
A nice picture of the opening presents mess.
The last two Christmas's we have opened presents and then headed to be with family. This year family was coming to us so I decided to make breakfast. I made brown sugar and cinnamon french toast with bacon and fruit. It was yummy! We might have to make that a tradition. Who knows though, we are going to have to perfect the Smith traditions over the next fews year I think.
Christmas with the Deans will be coming soon. I didn't want to overwhelm you too much. I thought this was enough for one post. Happy New Year everyone!