Ho Ho Ho, part 3

Pre-publishing edit: I created this post at the beginning of January since I was so far behind on all my December posts. Now Christmas is so far gone in the rear view mirror, it almost seems crazy to post it, but here it goes anyway. I'm also going to try to catch back up within the next few weeks. Wish me luck!

The tradition of the annual Ho Ho Ho picture continues. I just love these! You can see the difference between when I was using my phone and my "real camera". I wish I'd gotten the best one with my camera, but oh well! Maybe next year!

Mini-Santas

Outtakes:

William!

William again!

Even Ryan is like, "what are you doing?!?!"

Ry Ry!!!

Ryan: "What was that noise?!?!?" Haha!

Smoochers

Ryan is thinking, "get me outta here!"

More smoochers

Check out pics from the last 2 years: 2017 Ho Ho Ho pictures, 2016 Ho Ho Ho picture

A Spaulding Christmas 2018

We got to attend the Spaulding Christmas get together for the 2nd year in a row. This is the BEST event! Carole and her team put it on and do such an amazing job.

Santa even comes all the way from the North Pole for this event and we love getting to see him!

Preparing to go in

Stokes up first...

Then William got to go...

Then it was Ryan's turn...

All 3...

All 5...

Did you know that Santa is a Clemson fan?!?! We sure did.

Add in MaSha!

In fairness, when we walked in and talked to the photographer, I warned him that we may take a little while because I wanted to get quite a few pictures with Santa. Santa and the photographer graciously obliged. 

After this round of pictures, we took off the boys' sweaters. I'm not kidding when I say that it was crazy warm outside. It was probably in the 70's. The boys were hot in their sweaters and I knew they'd feel better in their short sleeve t-shirts. When we were taking Ryan's sweater off, he got upset. The sweater neck kind of caught on his ear or nose or something (this happens all the time when taking kids's shirts off). He got very upset and ended up throwing up a little at the party. This is always challenging because I knew that people probably saw it. The other thing is that I know how he is. He wasn't sick, as in a stomach bug or flu or anything, he was just upset and that's what he does when he gets upset. That said, I know anyone that witnesses it automatically assumes that he's sick and possibly contagious and probably worries about their kids catching whatever Ryan "has". It's not my favorite situation. Is that fair to say? Anyway, he did get a little throw up on his t-shirt, which didn't smell great. After a very short time, Thomas offered to take Ryan home so that the other 2 and I could stay a little longer, which we did. Poor Ryan and poor Thomas, to have to miss the rest of the party. We got to see our friends Amanda, Trey, Jackson and Harley (although we didn't get any pics with them) and of course Carole and the Spaulding team. I even took Stokes and William out to play outside of the clubhouse because the weather was so incredibly mild and sunny. There were other kids out there playing so the boys just jumped right in and played with the others. 

After all the hoopla and most of the people left, we did get to spend a few minutes with Beth and Carole....and got a Santa pic!

Thanks to Carole and the Spaulding Group for once again hosting a wonderful holiday drop in! We loved it!

Van Pelt Christmas get together 2018

December was a really, really busy month for us. It was filled with fun...but didn't allow much time to sit down with the old blog. I'll do my best to catch up since I literally did 2 posts during the entire month of December!

On the first weekend of the month, we had our annual Christmas get-together with my dad's side of the family. This is always a good time. It's so casual and laid back and fun to get together. This year was a little different since 2 of my cousins are now in college and weren't out for their break yet so they weren't there. We missed them this year and it makes me sad to think about a few years from now when 2 more cousins won't be here for this weekend. We may have to push it out to a different weekend at that point!

Anyway, we had Aunt Kathy, Uncle Duncan, Virginia, Abigail, Aunt Alison, Uncle Wells, my dad, Shanghai and MaSha over for our little celebration. We had a great time together!

Thomas, Aunt Kathy, Uncle Duncan

Appetizers and such

Thomas, Uncle Dunc and me

Aunt Kathy with Stokes

The brothers - Wells, Stokes and Duncan

The girls - Alison, Kathy, Virginia and Abigail

Thomas, MaSha and Ryan

Cute kids!

Opening gifts...

Very excited!

Monopoly for Millennials - ha!

Beautiful girls

Alison loving on Ryan

Porch time for the dudes

Family pic!

Lovey dovey

My dad and Shanghai spent the night with us on Saturday so we got to hang out some more after every one else had to drive home. Clemson was in the ACC Championship game so that's pretty much what our evening consisted of. We won. YAY!

Ryan chillin' with Dada

"playing" with Shanghai - poor girl!

Ganging up!

My dad and Shanghai had to leave on Sunday to drive back to Jacksonville. It was a brief trip, but important and valued, none the less. The whole weekend was great - family time, gifts, food...all good things.