Hines Family Reunion 2025

I am woefully behind on blogging this summer, but I’m slowly working my way through recaps and our adventures- which have been very numerous this summer! I am not sure if a family reunion counts as a vacation- some years it really feels like a vacation, and some years it feels incredibly stressful and like the opposite of a vacation! If I am able to read more than one book, get some sewing done, and sleep well- then it feels like a vacation. But if I don’t have any sleep or down time, I usually feel pretty stressed by the time I get back home!

Anyways- the Hines family has been having an annual summer reunion since long before I joined the family. When I was dating Theo I went to one or two reunions, and then when we were married and starting having kids it was a summer staple. I think we have missed maybe one or two summer reunions over the years (I know we missed 2014 because I was 39 weeks pregnant with Tera, and I know we missed another one because we had some terrible illness). Every year looks pretty much the same, but every year we add more cousins to the crew! We are up to 24 cousins- ages are 19 to 1. There were a few years that we were adding 4-5 kids each calendar year, but that has really slowed down now. One of my BIL and SIL are “paper pregnant” and waiting for an infant match for adoption, so we know we will add at least one more to the crew.

This year we arrived on Wednesday afternoon after a bit of a difficult drive. Theo and I both slept very little the night before and woke up to one thing after another going wrong in our preparations to leave. We were both very grumpy, which is not a great place to be when stuffed together in a vehicle for 6+ hours with four children. Anyways! We survived the drive, and stopped about an hour before we got to our destination to visit Theo’s little brother, Seth. He has Down Syndrome and lives in a lovely group home where he receives 24/7 care from some fabulous caretakers. He has a couple of buddies who also live in the home with him and it’s truly been the best case scenario for him. After a brief visit with Seth, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel for lunch…and then finally made our way “Up North” to the family reunion!

No sooner had we arrived than the kids were off on a boat/tubing ride with Grandpa and their cousins!

We enjoyed Wednesday dinner at the cabin and then headed over to the Airbnb to check it out and figure out our sleeping arrangements. The view was incredible, but the actual home was sub-par. It has become increasingly difficult to find a house on the lake that will sleep 25+ people!

We woke up Thursday morning to a chilly, rainy day so the boat/lake wasn’t much of an option. The kids went on lots of golf rides, ended up at the playground, and my SIL Eryn and I took the older girls to the Dollar Store to buy some things for a surprise birthday party for Grandpa. We also spent a lot of time in the driveway playing foursquare and riding the small bikes around!

That evening the sun peeked out and we played bells and boom whackers with Grandma, followed by a game of charades.

Friday was a much sunnier day- although still chilly, so the kids were up and ready to get on the lake! The Moms and girl cousins who are over 12 get to go out for a thrifting trip and lunch, while the Dads stay home and man the crew.

Once all the Moms got back, the kids got to do a fun scavenger hunt that Uncle Titus designed! He planned out some clues and some treasure hunting and the kids (and parents, too) got really into it! We all agreed that this needs to become an annual tradition! There is a LOT of cousins, so it was a bit of “controlled chaos” but I think that everyone had a great time!

Then there was a race back to the cabin to get swimsuits on and go back on the boat! Theo and I had planned to get on the boat to go tubing, but we turned our backs for one minute and the boat was FULL. Hahahaha. So we opted for the jet ski instead. But the jet ski had blown off its anchor and crashed the day before (no one was on it), so it was having some trouble. So we went with plan C: The paddle boards!

I gathered the older girls and we put together the surprise party for Grandpa that they had planned. On the first night there, I had pulled all the girls aside and told them that they were 100% in charge of Grandpa’s party- decorations, games, cake, etc. They LOVED this plan and took it and ran with it!! The only thing that the adults maybe wouldn’t have added to the party was the fake eyelashes. What do fake eyelashes have to do with Grandpa turning 70? The answer is absolutely nothing, but they found them at the dollar store and were obsessed with them. And it produced A LOT of screaming and giggling. So, there is that.

And the surprise party was a complete success except that a certain 3 year old may have tipped Grandpa off by saying “don’t look in the garage because we are decorating for your party” hahahaha. Gotta love an honest 3 year old!

Saturday morning was our last official morning there, so it was family picture time!

If you are new here, Theo is one of 7 brothers. He is #6 in the lineup.

5 of those brothers are married…we call ourselves “the sisters”

(Our SIL Kindrea wasn’t able to make it to the reunion this year)

And all together…we have 24 children!

(There was only one cousin missing this year!)

And the whole group!

And the cousins all lined up in age order…

(In case you are wondering the ages are 19, 17, 17 (not pictured), 14, 13, 12, 12, 10, 9, 9, 9, 8, 8, 7, 7, 6, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2, 1)

After we all survived pictures, we went out for lunch at a buffet! We basically take over the whole restaurant and the other patrons are often staring and counting as we walk in. I felt like the family reunion shirts were a nice touch this year because it made it obvious what this huge group of people were doing there 🙂

And don’t you wish you could be 16 again and eat an entire platter of dessert and then just go about your day with no consequences?

By Saturday afternoon the entire family is usually exhausted and running on fumes! There was one more boat ride, but it was chilly so I opted not to go. Which means that I didn’t get on the boat even one time this reunion! We finished up our Brambly Hedge puzzle and then started to gather all of our stuff that had been strewn around the cabin.

We woke up early Sunday morning and hit the road to get back home! I drove the entire way home so that Theo could get some work done, but unfortunately by the time I got home I had a splitting migraine. I went almost straight to bed at 1pm and didn’t get up until the next morning! We were WIPED!

Northern Michigan sure is beautiful in July, and I know that these reunions will go down as core memories for my kids. I’m so thankful for the opportunity to do this every year!