A Fun Family Weekend

I don’t want to miss recapping another big event that happened in October- a mini Hines family reunion! Now, some of you may see these photos and wonder what is so “mini” about this get together. But if you have been around for any time at all, you know that the Hines family is not mini at all!

The entire Hines family (we are now up to 14 adults and 20 grandkids with 3 more on the way!) tries to get together twice a year for a winter reunion and a summer reunion. Theo’s oldest brother Barnabas and family missed the summer reunion this year, and we are planning to miss the winter reunion since it’s fairly close to my due date. But that meant that I wanted to fit in a family visit sometime before our baby arrives. Looking at our calendars, this weekend in October worked best and I’m so glad we decided to go for it because it really was PERFECT!

Barnabas and Eryn and their five kids arrived on Thursday evening right around dinner time. They picked up a large order of Chick-fil-a on the way in and we all ate that together for dinner. We all crashed pretty soon after dinner- 7 out of 8 of the kids opted to sleep in the same room and even though I didn’t get any pictures, it was the cutest and most cousin-y thing! Love it.

The cousins were up early to gather around the fire!

Eryn and I headed out early to hit up Vintage Market Days. I typically go to this market every year and LOVE it, but it was even more fun this year to have my sister in law come along with me! We enjoyed pointing things out and getting some ideas for things to create and we each bought a couple things as well.

We shopped for a few hours and then headed back to our house for lunch since our other brother in law and sister in law had driven down from their house to join us for the day! I didn’t take too many pictures but we had 14 kids running around. It was a beautiful day so the kids and the Dads hung out outside while the Moms gathered inside. There were kitty snuggles and pumpkin painting and I didn’t see it myself, but there has been a video of some Dads hog wrestling. Just the perfect afternoon with a bunch of Hines.

We even gathered everyone around to casually find out if our baby is a boy or girl! We each got a cupcake and ONE person had the answer in their cupcake. It was a moment of suspense as we all bit in….and nobody had it. We glanced around to find two of our sweet littles just licking the icing off the top without biting into the cupcake. Haha. So we encouraged them to bite it and sure enough, my nephew Wes had the BLUE cupcake. It’s a BOY!

That afternoon I also recruited the men to help me rearrange some furniture in my house. And by rearrange furniture, I really meant rearrange my entire house. It was hilarious and everyone agreed they couldn’t deny a pregnant woman her nesting instincts and it turns out I was right because I LOVE my house so much more now that it is rearranged.

We whipped up a spaghetti dinner (can you believe this is all the same day?!) and gathered outside to eat our food! I love nothing more than being able to have a home and property where we can fit all of these people!

After dinner we put all the kids in costumes and went trunk or treating at our church! It was the perfect ending to the night because there were only about 30 trunks, so it was enough to be fun but not too many to feel overly exhausting.

We were absolutely exhausted and all crashed hard as soon as we got home! Well, except Theo. Just as he was going to climb into bed, he got a callout for a major situation at work and had to leave. He was gone from 10pm-4:30am that night.

We took it much slower the next day, but the ladies really wanted to hit up the One Dollar Book Store, especially for homeschool books. We all met up and browsed for 2 or so hours. We also brought our oldest daughters and it was fun seeing them look for books and stand by the cart reading.

I mostly didn’t take any pictures after that. The kids played outside all afternoon, I took a nap on the couch and we ordered pizza for dinner and all watched a movie together.

The following morning was Sunday and everyone was up and on the road by 8:15. Theo took the kids to church while I opted to stay home and just have some silence. Truthfully, I cleaned the house and caught up on laundry, but even that feels like a wonderful vacation after 20+ people have been over to my house!

It was a JAM-PACKED weekend, but I am so glad whenever we take the time to intentionally get together. Living states apart and having a lot of kids can sometimes feel like a hurdle and like it may not be worth the effort, but it always is. I am thankful for the Hines family, and I especially love getting Hines family antics in small doses ;).