Winter Retreat

We went up to Michigan this last week for the annual Hines Family Winter Retreat. I wanted to do a blog post all about it, but as I was going through my pictures I realized that I took almost NO pictures. I mean, I have half a dozen of Tera every day, but I didn’t take any other pictures. #fail.

But I’ll show you the pictures that I did take, and at least write about the weekend!

The original plan was to go up to Northern Michigan on Friday morning. We would spend a long weekend there with some of Theo’s immediate family. Theo got home from work on Tuesday morning and said, “pack your bags! We are leaving today!” He gave me about two hours to pack up everything and then we left!

Theo’s family has a getaway cabin “Up North” and it’s the perfect spot for a winter retreat. And winter did not disappoint! Man, was it cold!!!

We drove all day Tuesday (road trips take 10x longer with a child, just fyi…)

(no, Tera did not ride like this. Sheesh.)

Theo started playing this piano and I was like “WOAH! I didn’t know you played the piano!” Turns out the piano has a demo button and Theo has listened to it so often that he could mimic playing the demo. I seriously thought he was really playing! haha!

so on Wednesday Theo took me out for breakfast…

Those cinnamon roll pancakes were A-MAZING.

Of course this little goober came along, and stole the show. YES, she is sitting in a high chair! Where has my baby gone???!!??

We decided it would be a brilliant idea to take Tera out on the snowmobile. I mean, we wanted to go together and the grandparents weren’t there yet to watch Tera…so we all decided to go.

Step 1: Tera bundled and strapped on. (It was in the negatives outside, btw).

Step 2: Bundle myself up (I don’t know why her head looks so “broken”…she was just leaning backwards.

Step 3: Ready to go!

Step 4: Frozen tundra wasteland. We lasted all of 10 minutes.

We lounged and watched TV shows and ate out for every meal that day. We also did a workout:

(more on that in just a minute).

On Thursday the rest of the family trickled in, and we had a blast catching up with them and enjoying family time (and good food). Game time is also a favorite. During Hines reunions there always seems to be a favorite game. It’s always a different game every reunion, but somehow we seem to play one game non-stop. This time the game was Pass the Pigs. I totally failed at taking pictures!

Friday, Saturday and Sunday we spent hanging out at the cabin and braving the outdoors occasionally. Snowmobiling, sledding, shopping, cross bow and gun shooting are all included in these activities! I also completed a 1000 piece puzzle and worked a lot on my sewing project. I seriously wish I had taken more pictures! I didn’t even take any pictures with people other than Tera! I must be REALLY, REALLY sleep deprived to forget to take pictures…

Here are a few of the pictures I did manage to take.

Theo and I suggested that the whole family do a workout together. We picked up a deck of cards and picked four different exercises to go with each suit of the deck. Just shuffle the deck and pull up the card. Whatever suit it is, you have to do that exercise, and the number on the card. It was so fun to do a family exercise!

My father-in-law, mother-in-law and 7 months pregnant sister-in-law also participated (way to go, Mom, Dad and Eryn! P.S. Sorry this is the only picture I took of you the whole weekend! What was I thinking??!??)

Here is Tera in Grandpa’s glasses:

Our niece, Emma, wanted to sled with Grandpa, so we decided to bundle up all the cousins and take them on the sled.

Grandma drove the older girls to the meeting spot, while Tera rode on the sled. The plan was to have all three cousins ride on the sled together, but Tera fell asleep about 30 seconds into her sled ride and napped in the car while her cousins went for a sled ride.

Tera loved her cousins! She loved watching them run around, and looked at them adoringly whenever they would play with her. Here she is watching Evie look out the window.