House Tour: Lower Floor and Backyard

I realized the other day that I never finished the tour of our house! I had taken all of the pictures months ago, but never got around to doing the post. It took some time to find the pictures, but here they are.

If you recall from the first post, our home is a split-entry house. So when you open the front door, you immediately have to choose to whether to go up or down. If you decide to come down, the room opens up to a living room.

 The door to the right of the black bookshelf is Blake's room.

It has some nice built in shelves with a lot of storage space.

 
The door straight at the bottom of the stairs is a second bathroom.


And the door to the far right goes into the master bedroom and storage area.

  

 The wood door goes into the laundry room, storage area, and has access to the backyard.
The storage area is unfinished space. There is a spot for a washer and dryer, we have a deep freezer down there, plus there is a whole section of shelving that we have food storage, plus whatever else we have boxed up.

 Also in our storage room is a door that leads to our favorite thing about this house: the backyard. We have a fantastic yard and it is where we spend a lot of our time. That entire space from the tree back is garden. These pictures were taken early spring when we were just getting started on our gardening.

 The big tree to the left is a cherry tree. And there are 3 apple trees tucked in there on the right side. There is also a small plum tree and a small peach tree.

 Those are rose bushes along the back of the house. There were oodles of roses once they bloomed. Pink, yellow, white, magenta. They were beautiful.

 

The view from our deck.

 And that wraps up the tour of our house!

Hinton Reunion - Day 4 - Goodbyes

Sunday came quickly and our time together was just about up. We got up and went to Church, then came home to enjoy one last meal together. We got all of the grandkids together for a quick photo before they got out of their Sunday clothes.

It's hard enough getting a decent picture of one kid, let alone a group! Here are a few of the ones I managed to get. 

 As you can see, there was always at least one kid doing something silly.

 At this point, Blake decided she was done and decided to leave.

Then we added in Paisley to the bunch.

 

 And finally, a someone decent one with all of the kids. Just wish Blake's dress wasn't hiked up.

 What a cute bunch of kids!

I can't speak for everyone, but I really enjoyed the weekend. It's so fun to see everyone and have a chance to hang out. Love you all and can't wait to see you again.

Hinton Reunion - Day 3 - Outdoor Games

We had several fun things planned for Saturday, but we realized that we might have over planned a little and might not get to everything. I don't think anyone cared.

One of the things I miss most about Logan is the hiking. So we threw in a small early morning hike for whom ever wanted to join me. When we originally were discussing it, it seemed like more people were interested. In the end, only Garrett, Chad, and myself ended up going. We left a little before 8am, hiked up to the Wind Caves, and got back home around 9am. I accidentally left my phone at the house, so I don't have any pictures to document that event. 

Shortly after we returned from the hike, everyone headed over to the cemetery to visit David's grave. The headstone had only recently been installed. It looks very beautiful.

Once we were through visiting the cemetery, we went back to the house for some outdoor activities. Kaitlyn set up a really fun obstacle course. Each adult was accompanied by a kid doing a series of events such as....

1- Hitting all of the cones with a ball using hocky sticks

 2- Then the child had to pull the adult across the driveway on a skateboard.

 3-Run through the hoopes

 4- Answer some questions

 5-Complete the croquet course

 6- Child runs up the hill and touches the fence.

 7 - Then go down the slip-n-slide

 8-Pull child in wagon in and out of cones.

 9- Try to avoid the super soaker manned by grandpa while spitting cherry pits past the rope

 10- Go down the bounce house slide

 11 - Hurry back to the start line.

I believe they started off timing people to see who made it through the course the quickest, but eventually we gave up on the timers and just had fun with it. Amber and Julie even did a round together, though I don't remember who was the kid and who was the adult.

The rest of the day was spent playing in the yard on the bouncy toys. There was the jousting one where you try to push each other off of the pedestals. And there was the bounce house with the water slide. 

Or use it as a boxing ring, like Kaitlyn and Gavin.

 The slide was definitely a big hit. The kids loved it. The adults loved it. There was even a contest going on with different themes, like who can go down the most graceful, or scary, etc.

Will was having a blast. He probably went down that slide 100 times. He was still playing hard late afternoon and probably would have kept playing until bed time if I had let him.

Somehow we even convinced Grandpa to go.

 Everyone waited anxiously at the bottom with buckets full of water to ensure that he was fully drenched. The little step ladder inside can be difficult to climb up, and we weren't sure if he was going to make it.  

 Then down he came!

 (Notice everyone's huge smiles.)

The day was pretty relaxing. People would play outside for a bit, go inside to take a little break (or nap), grab some food, then come back out to play more. Most of the adults were happy to sit in the shade and watch the kids have fun.

We invited some neighbor kids to come and join us in the fun. For a while there was quite a few kids having a blast and getting some good use out of the toys. It was fun to have more people join us. 

 

 Kaitlyn tried taking Blake down the slide, but she didn't seem too excited by it.

We had delicious grilled chicken shish kabobs for dinner and continued the outdoor games afterwards. We had a scavenger hunt planned, but we opted out of doing it and just decided to spend the day at the house. Again, everyone was pretty worn out after a day spent in the sun. We spent the evening/rest of the night just hanging out, talking, and relaxing.