Christmas Party in Texas

Alright, so this is the 3rd Christmas party, and last, that we went to this month. This party was in Texas with my side of the family. Let me give you some background as to where this party was held so that you better understand the images.

We had our Christmas party at my uncle's house. My uncle lives on a plot of land that is owned by a farmer, Mr. Duncan. Mr. Duncan owns a HUGE piece of land in Lewisville, he has allowed about 10 families to live on his land. They basically bring in a trailer and live on the assigned piece of land. My uncle, and the other families there, do not have an address, they must get a P.O. Box to receive mail, and they don't get their garbage disposed of, so they just burn their trash in big barrels, it's very interesting. Email me any questions you may have. Anyways, there is a decent sized piece of land between my uncles trailer and his neighbor, which is his cousin. This is where the party was held. They have created a personal bar-be-que made out of bricks so that they can have parties outside and not have to worry about the bar-be-que getting damaged.

Here you see the Bar-be-que, at the moment it has menudo cooking inside the pot. Now very often, like during this holiday party, there is not enough room on the bar-be-que, and in the stoves inside the homes, to cook every single food that needs to be cooked. When this happens, my uncle creates a small bonfire and sets a grill on top of it to cook whatever needs to be cooked.
Here you can see a pot of tamales being cooked. I told Kody that what my uncles do out here would scare the fire marshall. They don't really clear room to make a fire, they just build it and hope to not start a fire.

Now, this was not the only makeshift fire that was built. Christmas Eve was a cold day in Lewisville Texas so we had to warm up without having to go back inside the house, so... my uncle decided to build a bonfire again.

Here I am, with my back turned to the fire so that my back could get warm. Can you see the fire in the background? There are several of us standing around it. We were trying to stay warm. In my hand is a mug of warm fruit punch. I'm sure you can see that the fire is just laying there on the ground with no rocks surrounding it, like they teach you to do in boy and girl scouts, I think it's funny how unsafe we are. I put a video in here, I hope it works, where you can see the fires and see the shack, that my uncle build this year, so that we could have music playing loud enough for all of us to hear while we ate and partied. (Sorry if the graphics are bad, I used a camera phone to do this)

This video was taken before everyone got there so there aren't that many people and many who were there already had taken up the seats inside both of the homes we were using to cook.
There were many things that you could eat at the party. There were beef tamales (red and green), briquette with mashed potatoes, menudo, bunuelos, Mexican beans, pineapple upside down cake, and chocolate cake of tres leches (three milks). Let's just say that there was too much to eat in one night.

Here's Brisa eating a Bunuelo, it's a fried tortilla with sugar and cinnamon.

You just saw, above, some of the food that was served. There were two big pots, like the one shown above, full of tamales. My mom alone made 8 dozen tamales. The only bad thing was that the cold weather made the food cold so we had to eat quickly.

Here is Brisa with her first cousin, once removed, Jazmin. (Jazmin's mom is my cousin) They are wearing jackets AND have a blanket AND are sitting right in front of the small bonfire.

Near the end of the night we celebrated my cousin's birthday. Gabby was born on Christmas Eve. We had a Mickey Mouse pinata and a star pinata which I did not get a picture of.

At the end of the night Brisa was so tired she fell asleep. She was so tired she did not want to open her Christmas pajamas gift at night. She just stared at the gift next to her. We had to open them for her and then get her dressed because she kept falling asleep.