Christmas

Paul worked 1/2 a day on Christmas Eve and then we drove up to Jackson to Uncle Dave's house to give him his gifts. By the time we headed home it was getting late so we just picked up some dinner on the way home. I recently heard about someone's Christmas Eve dinner tradition of getting all sorts of take-out food. I think we'll try that next year. By the time we got home Lana was fast asleep so there was no reading of "The Cajun Night before Christmas" or opening a Christmas Eve present. Neither did Paul attempt the whole sleeping by the Christmas tree. I think we were all a little pooped from the drive.


The kids woke up bright and early. The first thing out of Lana's mouth was, "Yay! Santa came!". Tanner was a little apprehensive about opening gifts. I think it was because I caught him trying to open a few gifts that were stuffed in a closet a few days earlier (think unhappy mommy moment). It took him about 1/2 a day to finish opening his gifts. Lana kept asking him if he wanted help opening his presents since she blew through hers in about 20 minutes (and then she asked me to wrap some more presents because she wanted to open more).



The one thing she absolutely wanted for Christmas was a purple pony. Her specification was it had to be bigger than a regular my little pony and my specification was it couldn't be a living/breathing one. Amazingly I found one.



Tanner was all about Lightning McQueen, Thomas the Train and tools of any sort. He has been toting around his Handy Manny Hammer and banging it on the brick wall. I have been sweeping up brick dust multiple times a day. Better, I think, than having to patch holes in the wall.

Later that night, some friends of ours braved the bitterly cold evening to go see the red-neck Christmas lights with us. I'm not trying to be derogatory when I say "red-neck", I'm just tellin' it like it is. Besides, I like the red-neck Christmas lights. What would we do on Christmas Day evening if there were no red-neck lights to see??




See, they have the Keebler Elves. We tried to get them to throw us some warm, fresh from the tree-oven cookies but they wouldn't comply. Perhaps they are bitter about the whole Christmas/Elves perception.



Then we have Santa and his reindeer chasing down the angels proclaiming Jesus' birth.



And Paul getting all chummy with Santa and a random snow man.




Here you can see Santa has kidnapped a few children. Uh, Santa...I think you're supposed to be dropping off presents not taking children out of their warms beds. Do their parent's know they're on the roof with a stranger?



It takes about 30 minutes to walk through the entire yard and take pictures.



We forgot to ask the owners if they leave it up all year round or if they take it down.






This is supposed to be Tanner posing in front of the Thomas the train display. Really it just looks like Tanner has humongous ears.

Merry Christmas!!