Each year, the Hines family has an annual summer reunion and an annual winter retreat. We all head “Up North” to the cabin and enjoy all of the seasons best activities. In the summer, we go on the boat, swim in the lake, go tubing, explore outside, and eat every single meal on the porch picnic tables. In the winter, we enjoy snow mobiling, building snowmen, having an annual polar bear swim, and crowding everyone into the inside dining room for meals.
The highlight of the trip for the kids is being able to hang out with Grandpa and Grandma. Sure, it’s really fun that they have all sorts of exciting things to do, but really…they just want to do those exciting things WITH Grandpa and Grandma.
I won’t even try to explain how many hats, gloves, coats and boots we had to keep track of all weekend! HA! The kids absolutely loved being outside, even if they could only last a few minutes at a time. The temps were around 20 degrees most of the weekend.
Some of the uncles and older cousins spent the morning digging a hole into the ice for our polar bear swim…
Mealtime involved moving all of the furniture out of the living room in order to fit in the extra tables for our growing family!
Lots of fantastic cousin time!
Did I mentioned the polar bear swim? A polar bear swim is a dip into frigid cold water, usually in a body of water that is now covered in ice. The rules are that the body and head has to be fully emerged in the water.
There were six polar bears this year…
Yep, both Theo and I decided to do it!
Titus and Avrie went first…
Then Sarah and I…
My strategy for the polar bear swim was to get in and out as fast as I possibly could. According to the video taken of me doing it, I was in and out in under 13 seconds. HAHA.
Lastly, Theo and his Dad plunged into the ice cold water…
It was COLD. Thankfully, we had a heated vehicle out on the ice so as soon as we hopped out of the water, we jumped right into the warmth. Honestly, it was miserable for the amount of time that it took to jump in the water and get out, and about 3-5 minutes of recovering the body heat, and then a lingering coldness in my bones for about 12 hours. But NO BIG DEAL. HA!
We decided to take a family group picture. It was wild trying to get everyone looking at the camera! Eryn was feeding all of the kiddos pieces of cheese to get them to say “cheese”
More time outside on the snow, this time putting the polar bear swim hole back together so someone didn’t accidentally fall into it.
This year, we needed some games that could be played by everyone. We have a bunch of adults who love strategy games and competition, two teen boys, and a bunch of younger children under 10, so the struggle to find an activity that everyone can participate in is real. We decided to play some minute to win it games and it was a total blast. We mixed up the individual families into teams so we could keep our competitive edge, and we designed some games for the adults and some for the kids. I seriously don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a LONG time!
By the last day of the weekend, the kids have been in overdrive excitement mode and are starting to crash, HARD. We attempted to play a few games with the kids, but there were SO.MANY.TEARS that we finally just turned on a movie for them.
There are many things that I did not get pictures of over the weekend, but I am really glad that Marissa took this picture. The brothers love to play strategy games. But they don’t just like to play the games- they like to *discuss* the games in great detail. Now, what if so and so had made that move back then and then so and so made that move as a result and then such and such would have happened instead of what did happen! I’m serious…they could go on for hours and hours like that. So in the evenings after the kids go to bed, the brothers stay up late, strategizing and playing and talking. Most of the sisters sit around sewing or reading or listening in or chatting, but we usually get pretty burned out of strategizing after a round or two.
And that is a wrap on the 2021 Winter Retreat!