Christmas in St. Louis and Mike as Santa Claus!!!

So, here I am sitting in the basement of Mike's grandparents house in St. Louis! It has been so much fun! We drove up here the day after Christmas, leaving at 6am and we actually arrived around 630pm! Even though we did gain an hour, we still made the drive in less than 13 hours! When we arrived, we hung out with family, and just relaxed. The next morning we woke up with good smell of breakfast coming down into the basement suite, which is where Mike and I are staying! All the family came over, and then we did Christmas with them. Mike's 2 cousins, Ryan and Morgan, who were in our wedding this summer were over and it was fun watching them open all of there gifts. Mike and I recieved a $25 gift card to Olive Garden, $25 gift card to Chili's/On the Border, and 2 $25 gift cards to McDonalds(one for each of us!) from his grandparents, and a few sweaters and jackets from his aunt and uncle! We made out pretty well this Christmas with the date night giftcards!!! Yay!!!After opening presents, and then taking an afternoon nap, we headed of to mike's mom's entire family get together at the Senior Citizen hall in Illinois. It was VERY Interesting! There was a water fountain at the Seniors hall that had a sign above it saying "PLEASE! This is a drinking fountain!!" We don't even want to know what people thought it was in order to put the sign out on it! Maybe someone used it as a bathroom one time!?!?! haha! Anyway, every year Santa Claus comes and gives presents to all the children there. It is usually one of the older men that dresses up in the Santa suit, but this year, somehow Mike got talked into being Santa Claus! haha it was so funny! His job was to come through the front door saying "ho! ho! ho!" and ask the children if they have been good this year, and then give them the present that is in the big red Santa bag! So, he did, Mike came through the door with a big "A Christmas Story" "HO! HO! HO!" He came and sat in the Christmas chair, and called out the names on the presents and the kids came and sat on his lap and received their presents. After all the presents were gone, a little girl came up and gave Santa a present that she had made. It was a book full of clippings of Santa Claus, it was so sweet.

Another great thing here in St. Louis is the famous QuikTrip convenient store. They have anazing slurpies and drinks all for great prices! If you haven't been to one, you need to go!!! Here are some pictures from all the festivites here in St. Louis, and I'm sure there will be more posts from here in St. Louis later!