Christmas

This year Christmas was...well different. As always, we had so much fun spending time with both families. We were sorry we had to miss the Cook Christmas, but it was going to be way too much traveling. We were glad to have Allison and Anthony home and glad we got to see Mark and Pat Christmas Eve. We had good food and lots of great beer. We got to see a big chunk of my family at my grandma's Christmas Day which of course lead to a few drinks and euchre games (and for the record Aunt Sandy and I beat Uncle Gene and Erica, who are always running their mouths about how unbeatable they are :)). But with all the fun we had, we were also sad. We were missing someone and it was hard to not have him there with us. Andy did put lights on the tree out back that grandpa used to call Aiden's tree and now it is Aiden and grandpa's tree.

Another reason Christmas was so different this year was because Aiden is starting to understand the whole Sants thing.  He was so excited about Santa coming, he didn't want to go to sleep.  It was after 10 before he fell asleep and he was up at 6 am Christmas morning.  I got him to go back to sleep until 7 (luckily since it was after 1 when the rest of us went to bed). Then he was awake.  I asked him if he wanted to go see if Santa came and he was all excited, yelling yeah, yeah, and he ran upstairs.  When he saw all the presents, he stood in awe for a minute. Then he said "those Aiden's presents?" and I said yes they are.  Santa brought you lots of presents.  You must have been a really good boy. And he got all excited.  I told him he had to go wake up grandma (who I believe was awake already from all the excitement screams) and then they went down and woke up Aunt Allison and Uncle Anthony. It was so much fun watching him be so excited. He got just as excited at my parents that night when he saw all the presents. He kept saying open presents, open presents. To be a kid again...

Here are a few pictures from Christmas...