The 2nd week in August, we were able to have a Family Reunion to celebrate Travis's parents 40th Anniversary and his Dad's birthday with all 26 family members in attendance! We all met in a central meeting place for almost everyone in his family, a small town in Illinois, called Rock Falls. We rented a house there with 9 rooms, a room for each family! It was so great to spend time with everyone and just enjoying hanging out! The boys got to go golfing and fishing, and the girls got to go shopping of course! We enjoyed having a fire in the evenings and even roasting s'mores! To celebrate Jim and Jan's 40th wedding anniversary, the kids made a wedding cake for them to feed each other. While we were decorating it, Natalie was upset that she had forgot to get a little bride and groom for the top of the cake. Luckily, McKinley's toys saved the day. She has a purse of little people that she carries around with her everywhere, and she just happens to have bride and groom little people. So we used those as cake toppers. When McKinley saw the cake she kept saying, "people" over and over and couldn't understand why she couldn't have them! It was quite funny! Travis and Natalie also made them a picture recreating the town where they dated and grew-up for their anniversary.
Natalie made us all matching shirts that said, "The H" on them. We tie-dyed our shirts one day which was a lot of fun! They all turned out great!
A few of the other fun activities we were able to do while we were all together is play a family Minute to Win It game. We had fun sucking up M&M's, shaking ping pong balls out of a kleenex box on our backside, moving a cookie from our forehead to our mouth using only our faces, doing a cereal box puzzle, and picking up various sizes of bags using only our mouths. It was a hoot and made for a fun time!
Another fun thing we were able to do, is ride on a train. The man that lived in the house beside the house we were staying in had a train complete with a track throughout his whole yard to ride on. He was really nice and took the kids on a whole bunch of rides! He even had a few times that were designated for adults only, which was a lot of fun too! He gave the kids all conductor hats and train whistles to keep!
We also spent a lot of time just relaxing and hanging out! McKinley loved spending time with all of her cousins!
After a few days at the house, we headed to spend the last few nights in a hotel, due to a mix up in dates with the house. We stayed in a town just a little ways down the road. It was Jim's birthday that night, so we all headed to a park to play and have birthday cupcakes that evening.
We had fun swimming in the pool at the hotel and spending sometime at a local national park!
We had such a great time! It's not often when all 26 of us are together, so it was so much fun that we all got to be there together for a few days! McKinley overall did really well on the drive out there! She had fun on the iPad and watching her shows! We were pretty impressed with how well she did. On the way home we stopped at a park in Des Moins, IA for her to play with. As you can tell from the picture she quite enjoyed it!
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