If you’ve been around here for any time at all, you know that twice annually the Hines family gets together for a mega reunion! It is always a huge blast, and quite often we cram a whole year of fun into just 3 or 4 days. By the end of the reunion, we usually need about as many days to recover! Ha!
We arrived around lunchtime on Wednesday, after getting up and hitting the road by 6am. Our hope was that our kids would fall asleep for the first hour or two, but that did not happen. Still, we made some good progress and were happy to arrive Up North by lunchtime! The kids immediately found their cousins and all the fun things to do!
It rained for most of that first day, but a blast was still had by all! We finished off the day with a browse through Grandpa’s treasure box and then headed over to the Airbnb for some late night games and a good nights sleep.
I woke up early on Thursday morning and went for a run. I have been really enjoying getting back into running, and it is by far the thing that helps me most with my mental health. Since family reunions can be rather over stimulating and sometimes emotionally overwhelming for me, I have found that getting good sleep, going for a run, and making sure to eat solid meals is the best way for me to stay level headed even when there is a lot of chaos. Please note that I am not saying that I don’t like being at the family reunion- it can just be very overwhelming for me when there is a lot of people and a lot of deep discussions and a lot of kids who are surviving off a steady diet of sugar, grandparents and cousins. 😉
Orion and Judah are only a few months apart and they were loved and cuddled by everyone!
Day 2 was the perfect day for a Ranger hay ride and time out on the lake on the boat!
The day just flies by when there are so many fun things to do, and before we knew it, it was dinner + treasure box + hanging out in the driveway + a bonfire with s’mores and then bedtime at the Airbnb!
We woke up on Friday morning with a full day on the schedule! We started out with our 2nd annual 5k run/walk. Next year I will try to do better about giving a heads up for training purposes, but we had full participation from the whole family- riding in the ranger totally counts haha.
My nephew Ian and I ran the whole 5k and he did great! He said it was only his second 5k! I probably would have been much slower if I didn’t have him to keep me motivated!
After so much exercise, it was only logical to get cleaned up and dressed and go out to lunch at a Chinese buffet! This is a new tradition for us- we have never been out to eat at a family reunion! I don’t think that my kids had ever been to a buffet restaurant before, so they were very overwhelmed, but quickly got the hang of it!
After gaining a few pounds at lunch, we decided to grab some family pictures. Unfortunately, its been quite a few years since all seven brothers have been together, and this year we were missing about 11 people for family pictures 🙁
We were missing the Ethan and Kindrea family, and Isaiah spent most of this day at urgent care, and I somehow neglected to grab a picture with Aaron and Seth, but here are the rest of the families who made it into photographs!
The afternoon was more boating, more cousins and more fun! By the evening, all the parents decided that it was time to let our kids zone out in front of a movie.
The Dads and big teens spent a lot of time playing this game that Theo’s nephew Avrie built/made. They spent a lot of time discussing it and how to improve it, or what rules to take out or add in. It’s wild that the oldest cousin is going to be 18 this year! Orion is the current youngest. In total, there are 23 cousins!
Saturday was the last full day of the family reunion and it just so happens to be one of my favorites: Sister Thrift and Lunch Outing! We leave all the kids with the Dads (yes, all 23 of them!) and go out thrifting and eat lunch out and just have a wonderful time together!
As soon as we got home from thrifting, Theo headed off to a bachelor party for a friend and I was solo Mom for the rest of the day/night. Thankfully, I wasn’t ever alone and all the uncles took over for Theo taking my kids out on the boat and another Ranger hay ride. The only rough part was bedtime!
4 days of MAXIMUM fun was had by all in our family! It’s incredibly fun to see these cousins grow up together and interact with one another at our family reunions! There is a lot of people in a very small space for a packed number of days and it can be overwhelming and overstimulating at times, but I know that my kids are growing up with these reunions as one of their core memories!
Sunday dawned bright and early and we had to pack up and be out of our Airbnb and then meet at the lake for a wedding! But that seems like another blog post for another day!