Early Christmas

Since Aaron was leaving before Christmas, we had an early Christmas with the kids and Aaron before he left.  I tried for weeks to get a good time/place for a family picture before he left.  Finally, the Saturday before he left we asked our neighbor, who was out taking pictures of the kids playing in the snow, to come and do it.  We actually got a pretty good one and we used it for our Chrismtas card.

This year, thanks to Karla, we started the Elf on a Shelf tradition and had such fun doing it!  Brady named him Elfie and each morning Brady woke up to find Elfie in a different spot in the house.  By the time Christmas was over, even Collin would look for Elfie in the morning.

We let the kids "open" their presents early since Aaron was leaving.  Collin got a new tricycle we can push him on from Grandma Gray (she had bought if for him at Thanksgiving and had him open it here so that way we wouldn't have to transport it back from IL).  And Brady got a new 2 wheeler bike with training wheels from us.  They were both so excited and we let them ride them around inside for a couple weeks after.

Collin showing Brady how to rev his handle bar.

Showing off their new bikes in front of the tree. 
Yes, Collin is our little dare-devil!

 Aaron had to leave a couple days later and the boys actually did pretty well with it.  We did a couple fun things in those couple first days to try and keep their minds off of it.  I took them to see Santa and play at the Santa Wonderland at Bass Pro.  And we made a gingerbread train (I went the easy route and bought the kit!).

Collin did great on Santa's lap, especially since he is a Mama's boy!

Collin was enjoying the candycane from Santa!

Brady proud of his gingerbread train

We will miss Aaron for Christmas this year, but we were glad to have a fun little celebration with him before he left.  He got several presents that he was able to take with him on his deployment, so that was good.