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MISSION, TEXAS -- A Valley family is asking for help in celebrating their first Christmas ever.

All six family members, the parents and four young children, live inside a small, 60-square-foot trailer, with no electricity and no running water.

"It’s hard because the kids don’t know what you have and what you don’t,” mother Aracely Sanchez told Action 4 News, with tears streaming down her cheeks. “They just ask for stuff.”

Sanchez said it is painful for her knowing she cannot provide the children with a proper Christmas celebration.

"They have no electricity, they have no running water, there's six people living in this small trailer," Marisa Garza said.

She is the principal at Cavazos Elementary in La Joya where two of the children, Rocio, 12, and Rafael, 8, attend.

"They’re good kids at the school. They're excellent, they behave really well,” she said. “They try really hard in their classes and they do really well."

She called Action 4 News after looking into why the children had been arriving late to school. It turned out they had no electricity and no transportation to the school, other than a malfunctioning old van.

The family has lived in the small one bedroom trailer along Jewel Drive in Mission for the past eight months.

"Being inside all together, we don’t fit inside,” Rocio Urbano, the oldest of the siblings said. “On the floor sometimes we sleep."

Rocio’s favorite subject in school is math, and she hopes to one day be able to give her parents and siblings a better life.

The bathroom they all share is smaller than a closet, and with no running water, they say bathing is difficult.

For a lack of space, their refrigerator and their dining room is outside their home, but with temperatures dropping very low lately, they say this even eating can be a hardship.

Sanchez and her husband say they tried hard but he was laid off from his previous job.

He's been doing small jobs here and there. But money is very tight.

"The truth is every year we don’t celebrate Christmas,” Sanchez said, holding back tears. “Those days we just go to bed early, precisely because of that."

Now they are hoping Valley residents will held them a hand, to give their four children their first Christmas ever.

Anyone interested in helping out can contact The Perfect Image, the group in charge of collecting the donations. Their number is (956) 627-0115.

They have also set up an account at the Inter National Bank, under the same name.