Pictures With Santa and Other Weekend Fun

I observed another Christmas tradition this weekend. I made my way up to the booming metropolis of Waxahachie, TX and nosed around some townspeoples' houses with my friends.

That is, we bought tickets for a Christmas home tour that some of the girls have been going to for 8 straight years now. I don't get to go every year, but it's sooo fun! We eat lunch somewhere girly:



Maybe shop a little, and then head to the first of four houses that we'll get to wander all over for the day. Some of the homeowners spend months decking their halls, and all the decorations are different. Some homes are new, some (my favorites) are historic.

One of the homes this year featured nativity scenes. They had nativities from all over the world - some were pretty much what you would expect:



And some were a little less traditional, like this one where Joseph is playing with baby Jesus:



The middle two houses were new homes. One had this beautiful kitchen, which Kate really does a great job of showing off:



The other one was a little odd - it was a custom built home with some details that didn't really go together - BUT, it was on the lake and had...wait for it...a lazy river!! Instead of a swimming pool they installed a lazy freakin' river! Just like at Schlitterbahn. I just thought that was the smartest thing ever.



We saved the historic home for last. It was really pretty, and there were some little boys selling hot chocolate outside. (Their poster said half their profits would go to their church. I thought that was a pretty generous tithe. Or a clever marketing ploy. Either way, I bought some.)



Parts of this house seemed like they could be original to the house. They had one of those miniature Christmas villages. Those are always fun.





I like making miniature things look like they're regular-sized in pictures.

Also, Kate's mom's hairdresser was there taking tickets, and he was fascinated by Vanessa's dreds. (I don't know if that's how you spell that.)



Kate knew someone at every house that we went to, I think. I miss that about small towns.

This house was funny because parts of it had been preserved pretty carefully, but you could tell they updated about half of it in the seventies. Bet you wouldn't have expected these to be inside the house pictured above:



But, really, what else could you put with that wallpaper?

Oh yeah! And we got to see Santa Clause. He was passing out apple cider at the house with the lazy river. The owner happened to be a professional photographer, so we enlisted her to take our picture with skinny St. Nick.



What cute girls I spent my weekend with!