Real Housewives' Taylor Armstrong Talks First Christmas After Russell's Suicide

Exclusive! Reality-TV star opens up about the holidays with daughter Kennedy: "We’re going to make it, one way or another"

The holidays are about to get very real for Beverly Hills Housewives star Taylor Armstrong.

This is the first Christmas Armstrong and her daughter Kennedy will be spending together after the tragic suicide of her estranged husband, Russell Armstrong.

So how are mother and daughter holding up?

"It's very different, but at the same time we're getting through it," Armstrong told us yesterday at her cupcake decorating party at Sweet E's bakery in Los Angeles.

"We went and got our tree just like we always do," she said. "Once it was up and decorated I felt like, 'OK, we did it. We got through it.' Right now for us, it's just day-to-day and realizing that we're going to make it."

Armstrong says they'll spend Christmas at home. "I'll have all my family over and friends," she said. "Opening gifts on Christmas Eve and then I also have Santa on Christmas morning."

So what's daughter Kennedy asking Santa for this year? "She wants an iPad," Armstrong laughed. "She's 5. Unfortunately, if that's the one thing she wants, I'll cave in and give it to her."

Meanwhile, Armstrong is busy writing her upcoming memoir, which she says has been a very "hard" process.

"It's pretty much all there," she said. "A lot of it came out of my journaling that I had done previously, so going back through those wasn't easy, having to relive some of my experiences. But it's important, so I'm putting it all out there."