Hales Family Reunion

FYI...there are lots of pictures in this one, so feel free to skip if you don't want to look at all of them!

All of my siblings were able to come to Cincinnati during the last week in April for a family reunion.  We enjoyed fun activities each day, and all of the youngsters loved playing with each other!  The adults had a lot of fun, too, but I just didn't take pictures of those moments!

These first two photos are from the Cincinnati Children's Museum.  It was fun watching the kids (young and old-ish) all explore and use their imaginations here.  They have pretend kitchens, restaurants, grocery stores, houses, building areas, water areas, and everyone's favorite--a huge tree house!  It was very easy losing track of the kids in the tree house, but there were enough adults there to keep tabs on all the kids almost all of the time!

Later that night, my mom and dad prepared an FHE activity and lesson around a treasure theme.  The kids all dressed up in pirate costumes (complete with nasty-looking false teeth for the kids to wear!) and went on a treasure hunt throughout the house!  At the end, they each received a little treasure box with chocolate gold coins!  My dad then shared a sweet lesson letting the kids know that he considered them his treasures and sharing his own treasure--his testimony--with them.  It was a great evening!

We also went to the zoo one day, but since we have a zoo pass, I chose to not take a bunch of photos...plus it was hard keeping up with Nicholas and Renae and take pictures at the same time!  I did, however, take this one of a kea bird trying to eat Renae's shoe.  We thought it was kind of fun having this bird trying to climb up my leg to get to Nae Nae!

These next few pictures are from an indoor play area called Recreations Outlet.  My kids primarily stuck to the swings, and Renae tried most of the slides.  Nicholas, however, gets nervous around slides, but did choose to climb on a few things other than the swings.

This was a really neat slide that Renae could go down while riding on the car that she is trying to push over the the slide in this picture!

Later that evening, we went to an indoor water park in the area, but we also opted not to take photos in there!  I'll have to try to snag some from my parents, who brought their waterproof digital camera with them.  I was pretty proud of Nicholas, though, because he went down the kiddie water slides over and over again and was much braver than I thought he would be!  Renae loved all of it, but her little teeth were chattering most of the time!

On the last day, my mom had planned for a lot of fun, little activities for the kids.  They did art projects, ate snow cones, and even got to have a piñata!

Yep...that's my little runt running around with an egg piñata bottom on his head!  Thanks, Dad, for giving him the idea to run around with this "helmet" on his head and ram his noggin into anyone he came in contact with!

We had a lot of fun that week and already miss everyone so much!  I feel very blessed to be a part of the Hales family!