And the Stockings were Hung

The Russ Family and Ant Viki's Stretchy Christmas Stockings.

If you ask any of the kid that were raised in the home of Liz and George Russ they could all tell you they had the coolest Christmas Stockings made by their Aunt Viki.  All 10 of the kids had their own, they would stretch to be filled every Christmas morning.  One of the best parts was that almost none of them where the same and they were not Christmas colors.  

To make our first Christmas special I wanted to make Blake and I some stockings we could use for the rest of our lives (not thinking I would have to compete with Aunt Viki).  I thought this would be a simple and even easy task.  But one thing led to another....

I only made Blake's stocking ginormis at first but I got jealous and made me a second one.  

Blake said he wanted. No, NEEDED his to be bigger then mine because he is the patriarch of the family,  By mistake I made mine a little bigger.  But with some extra time, I made mine smaller hiding some of my long hard work.  

So by Sunday the 19th I started making my 3rd stocking.  But then I felt bad for making myself 2 and not making any for my nieces and nephews (who's parents would love their kids to have hand made, stretchy stocking) So I finished 4 average size and 2 huge stocking before Christmas.  But the last stitch did not come till Christmas Eve around 8pm.  I was able to surprise my sister Amy with stockings for her kids.  

And she made us our first Christmas ordament.  

It was a wounder full Christmas Eve.  I could not have asked for anything more.


After spending Christmas Eve at the Russ house a packed up our car and drove to the Santos house.  There we waited for Santa to come and finished our Annual Christmas puzzle.

Adam wrapped his gift to us in Symphony bars

It is so nice that our families live so close.  We are almost able to fit in both family traditions (It would not be Christmas without my mom's Christmas Wassail)  I'm just glad both our families go to the movies on Christmas day each year.  

Santos Family Cruise

So we took a Disney Cruise to Nassau and the Disney Island of Cast away Cay.  And here is my top 10 reasons why this was an amazing family vacation.  

#10 

The beach

#9

 Food

Well everyone that has been on a Cruise always talks about the food.  And yes it was amazing not having to cook or clean.

 plus we loved our server 

#8

Parasailing  

#7 

Tangled

Well Blake and I work all the time we do not get to go out to the movies a lot.  And I know we would not have gone to see Tangled in theaters if it was not being shown on the boat at 12:01 the day it came out on.

And it was such a GOOD movie I loved it!

#6 

5k run

The day we spent on Castaway Cay they had a 5k run at 8:30am.  I did not know about this before the cruises but I really wanted to run so I took my mom's shoes (I'm a size 9.5 and she is an 8) and Jari's shorts and got ready for the race.  Blake got up with me and I thought he was just going to walk me to start because he had flip-flop's and swim trunks on.  I still did not know he was planning on running till the race almost started.  He began the race in flip-flop's then went to just his bare feet.  If you do not think that is crazy he also came is 3rd, I came in 4th.  (He has never past me in a race before)

 but it did not come with out blister...

#5 

Games Show

The first night Jari and Adam got on a family game show.  It was a lot of fun, they almost won but there was a family full of Disney fanatics that took the gold.  Silver was okay.

#4 

Bike Ride

#3

 Junkanoo

Junkanoo well we had not idea what this funny word was before we went on our cruise but after a tour and a little history lesson we soon realized how cool the Bahamian tradition is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa5uX2TcrRo

I loved learning about the cloture but we also toured many of the forts and learned about the history of the City.

the Queen's staircase

#2

The Disney Magic

Every night there was a show to go see before dinner.  Not only was it family friendly it was amazing.  The singing, the dancing, the way they could change the stage for every scene, and having all the characters.  What else it there to love?

Disney does it right... need I say more.

#1

 being with the family

We got to see them build this Ginger Bread house over the 4 days we were there.

This is for our friends that live up north...