christmas in temple

we headed to temple thursday morning for the o'neal family christmas festivities. most of thursday was spent hanging around the house, wrapping a few last minute gifts and doing some christmas cooking and baking. grant and lance were responsible for a few last minute wal-mart runs and grant decided tanner needed an early christmas present and came home with this (last minute shopping for grant=early christmas for tanner so grant doesn't have to wrap it!). 

he loves his 4 wheeler...knows where all the buttons are to make it make noise and his feet are almost touching the ground...i'm sure he'll be riding laps around the house all by himself in no time!

grammy had also found a santa suit for tman-i have to say he made a pretty cute santa (even though he refused to wear the hat! every time we put it on him, he'd immediately pull it off. the few pictures we did get with the hat on were because he forgot about the hat for 10 seconds.)

santa tanner checking out the tree and the presents (and yes, all but like 3 or 4 of those presents were for him...can you say spoiled?!?!) and then sticking his tongue out at me as if to say-haha no way am i wearing that santa hat!

tanner got another early christmas present when ipop came home from work thursday night. ms. poole (one of his patients who LOVES him) had been by the office...as she does every christmas...and had sent gifts-lots and lots of gifts. you never know what ms. poole might send, but this year she sent ipop home with great gifts for t-man...a blanket, 2 stuffed animals, and the best part-3 different v-tech toys that he loves...and he was excited to have some new toys to play with at grammy's. he especially loves the steering wheel that makes all kinds of fun car sounds!

thursday night was a rough night (little did we know it was just the beginning of rough nights) for tanner. he was just worn out from all the christmas excitement and couldn't sleep. he woke up at 10 for a party in his pack n play and after rocking, singing, bouncing, swaying, etc for 2 hours, we finally got him down for the night around midnight. let's just say his 5:30 wake up call was a little too early the next morning!

christmas eve started with lance and ipop going on a jog...and then crazy lance decided he'd jump in the pool with ipop (ipop does this every morning...lance on the other hand does not!). as you can see, it was rather cold...

one of the MANY attempts at a family photo before the christmas eve service...

aunt taylor and uncle brian reading the christmas story to tanner

after the christmas eve service we came home and put tanner to bed. he decided he was missing all the fun and decided he needed to wake up at 8 for the party. he would not go back to sleep. we decided we'd try the whole entire bedtime routine again...about 10 pm that night tanner was busy playing and splashing in the bath. does this kid look tired to you?!?!? we even got him a second bathtub basketball set (gigi and pops had given him) for temple he loved it so much!

he finally went back to sleep...only to wake up around 5:45 the next morning! ugh! clearly the christmas excitement had gotten to him! i tried to tell him santa preferred bringing presents to little boys who SLEEP...if you don't sleep, santa can't come!

since tanner woke up so early, we ended up waiting to open presents until after tanner's morning nap...so santa ended up coming and filling everyone's stocking during nap time. santa generously filled the stockings with lots of fun presents to open and instead of us exchanging gifts with each other, we shopped for a santa pal family in temple. tanner got to shop for a little boy that was the exact same age as him...they even shared a birthday! tanner picked out a few cute outfits and then some blocks, a toy car, diapers, wipes and a fire truck (just like his ice cream truck) to give to ivan. we had lots of fun shopping and wrapping them up for him!

 

tanner must have been a REALLY good boy this year because santa and grammy and ipop were a little over the top! tanner quickly caught on to the idea of opening...tearing paper is FUN!

 a fun toy that spins and lights up (and of course says for ages 5+)...grammy thinks tman is advanced! and a new bib

  busy unwrapping...

and playing after grant put it all together (santa forgot to pre-assemble it!)

 opening a present from taylor and brian

 this is so much FUN! i love christmas!

 christmas lunch with family and friends...

and a friendly game of gestures (notice tanner snuggled up with grammy...he was EXHAUSTED but refused to nap!)

we got tanner to bed extra early since he was just exhausted from all the fun of christmas day...but it still didn't work in helping him sleep. he was back up, crying at 10 pm...and i was near tears as well! so we loaded up the car (thanks to grammy holding tanner and me, lance, ipop, taylor and brian throwing everything into bags and into the back of the car) and headed back home to dallas around 10:45 christmas night. yes, i left crying...i was exhausted from tanner not sleeping and of course my idea of christmas wasn't quickly packing up the car and rushing to leave christmas night. thankfully he slept the whole way home (he was asleep before we even hit I-35) and went right to sleep when we got home around 1:15 am. and of course he was up ready to play at 5:30 the next morning! it took us all several days to get back on schedule and caught up on sleep. i think the kid just likes his own house and his room with his crib!

on the flip side, it was nice to have a day or two with lance home so we could take down christmas decorations, start getting ready for tanner's birthday party (again, having a birthday so close to christmas...what was i thinking...bad planning!!!), and get shelves in an attempt to somewhat organize the christmas aftermath in the play room.

christmas was so much fun this year experiencing it with tanner...so much more fun with a little kid! i can't wait til next year!