It’s time for me to recap the Hines Family Winter Retreat! This is an annual tradition where we all gather together at my in-laws cabin “Up North” in Michigan. We usually have a blast playing in the snow, riding snowmobiles, doing a polar bear swim, the sisters go shopping, the brothers go shooting, and the kids run around poaching snacks and collecting treasures from Grandpa’s treasure box. It always a lot of fun, a lot of people, a lot of chaos, and a lot of memories made.
And this reunion will go down in the books for us!
We left Thursday afternoon for our 6 hour drive Up North. Theo and I both requested to take off work a bit early so we could hit the road and avoid getting in at 11 pm like we usually end up doing. Spoiler alert: even though we left early, we did not arrive early. HA.
We left Dayton and there was torrential rain. We had flash flood warnings and the windshield wipers were going as fast as they could. Before we even left Dayton, we passed a gnarly accident where a pickup had overturned. It was sobering. About two hours in, the rain turned to freezing rain, and then about 30 minutes after that it turned to straight sleet. There were cars just sliding off the roads around us and Theo had to keep both hands on the steering wheel for the entirety of the trip just to keep us from sliding. Right around when we hit Michigan, the sleet turned to snow. We got in a lane behind a semi truck that was creating tracks for us, but the rest of the highway was entirely covered in ice + snow and you couldn’t even see the lanes. Everyone was just making it up and driving staggered next to each other. It was very stressful! The snow continued thickly with no roads cleared until about 4 miles before our destination and then poof! it cleared right up. Not a drop of snow or sleet or even rain. It was so strange. During our drive from Dayton to Northern Michigan, we averaged 45mph on the highway and it took us almost 9 hours.
We stumbled into our Airbnb late that night, exhausted. Ezra had been on his nebulizer for most of the week and was struggling with his coughing and breathing. We got the kids settled into bed, bumped up the heat (it was FREEZING!) and climbed into bed ourselves. We were up quite a few times in the night with Ezra and at some point it occurred to us that the heat was not turning up. Ya’ll, it was probably less than 50 degrees in our Airbnb and we were NOT pleased. Thankfully, we were really only sleeping there and spending the entire days at my in-laws cabin, so we bundled up and headed over there on Friday morning.
We walked into the dining room and everyone was gathered around eating breakfast. My father in law gave me a weird look and pointed to the family birthday sign behind me. I glanced at it and noticed a new name on the list but didn’t know that any of my SIL were pregnant, so I brushed it off as someone wanting to write a dog name on the birthday list. A few minutes later, I walked over toward the back sliding door and saw A BABY. A true life BABY. I was soooooo confused. I looked around at all the people just living their normal breakfast lives and wondered who in the world this baby belonged to. The whole room began to erupt with talking and explanations but I still did not know WHOSE BABY THIS WAS. A foster baby? A niece or nephew that was being watched for the week?
As you can see from this photo, we were very, very confused.
But, no. This was a real biological baby that my sister in law grew in her own womb for 10 months, birthed 12 days before, AND DIDN’T TELL ANYONE ABOUT.
For the shock factor. For the fun of saying that it was the biggest surprise/prank to ever be pulled off.
And what a surprise it was.
My first reaction was silent shock. Then I was a little bit angry. How could they not tell us about a baby??? How terrible of a sister in law am I that I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW? It took awhile to get used to the idea of his existence. Usually we have a few months to prepare for the thought of a new nephew/cousin, but this time he was fully there in the flesh!
After that surprise, we settled into normal family reunion things. We hung out with cousins, played some games, went shopping. It was FRIGID cold outside and so we didn’t end up doing as many outdoor activities as we usually do when Up North.
The kids got to select one treasure a day from Grandpa’s treasure box.
And playing with the toys in Grandma’s toy chest.
Some sisters and I went out to shop out a dollar store and we found these. We were cracking up.
The ladies worked on a puzzle while the men played some card/strategy games.
And Grandma gathered all the kids together to play the handbells!
That evening we played a competitive game (ha) that involved seeing who could blow out the most candles. All the little animals lined up indicate who made it the farthest. I don’t remember who ended up blowing the most candles out, but no one managed to blow the entire table length!
We wound down the day with dinner and some more conversations/play time after dinner, but then all headed out to our respective sleeping places. The Hines family is rather large and we have started booking two Airbnbs in addition to the cabin. Even then, we are usually sharing a 3-4 bedroom Airbnb with one or two other families. Its usually crazy and often fun and I think that the kids will really look back on it as good memories. Unfortunately, the family that we were supposed to be sharing with got sick last minute and wasn’t able to come to the family reunion. So that meant that we had an Airbnb to ourselves. Which was really nice, except for the whole NO HEAT thing. We arrived back around bedtime and finally fully accepted the fact that our Airbnb had no heat. There was two thermostats – one did not produce any heat at all, and the other produced a small amount of heat. Thankfully, the one that produced heat was in the bedrooms, so we all piled under blankets and slept one more frigid night (it was probably 60 in our bedrooms, and in the 40s in the rest of the house). We got ahold of the owners to tell them about the problem and they offered to send someone out, but since it was so late, we asked them to just send someone ASAP in the morning.
Saturday at the family reunion was more of the same, and I didn’t take many pictures! We did puzzles, the ladies went shopping, the kids played with toys and their treasures, the brothers played strategy games. Snacks were on hand. Babies were snuggled. A group picture was taken.
Saturday night we played the most hysterical game that involved helmet hitting. Basically, one person puts on a helmet and sits in a chair. All of his or her family members gather behind him/her, out of sight. They each take turns smacking the person on the helmet and the helmet person has to guess who it was that hit them. It was HYSTERICAL. And the perfect game for a family of 7 brothers who have been waiting their whole lives to have permission to hit each other. Don’t worry- it did not hurt at all- we used a glove to smack the helmet. I took many videos of the adults playing, but for some reason didn’t get any pictures of the adults. The kids also wanted a turn and it was so so so funny to see them questioning whether they really, truly were allowed to hit their sibling/cousin on the head.
We headed home late that night full of cousins and good company and also ready for some peace and quiet. HA. Spending two days with 14 kids and 10 adults in a small cabin is like overstimulation to the max. And – for our last night at our Airbnb, we had HEAT! Glorious HEAT!! Too bad Ezra was up all night coughing, or it would have been the most wonderful ending to a big, full weekend.
And that was all for now! We will do it all again in the summer.
(I must not have recapped 2020, 2019 or 2018?)