Hatch Family Reunion 2012

With so many fun events to recap and stories to tell, I've decided I will do several smaller reunion posts as opposed to the mega-post it would otherwise be.

We pulled into Helena at about 5:30 p.m. and parked our car behind the five others that were already in front of the Hatch family home.  Being the Amazing Race lovers that we are we immediately joked about being the last team to arrive.  Luckily, we were quickly informed that this was a non-elimination leg. (And then we realized that Ansel and Christopher had not yet arrived so we weren't last after all.)

Sizing everyone up was one of the first orders of business.  Just look how tall these boys have grown:

Seth--12, Caleb--14, Ansel--13, Me, Brendan--14, Jonas--10

Brendan is the only one to have officially passed me in height but the others are awfully close.  I may still be the goofiest, however.

These two were such cute little friends:

Words don't describe how much it warms my heart to see the love these kids have for each other.

 The Helena sun was hot!  We had to sit in a line next to the wall to be in the shade.

The tents were set up for the kids.  It was fun at first...but turned into an extra late night and an extremely early morning.  We decided Ian was the sole survivor (yes, we love reality TV) as he was the only cousin to sleep every night of the reunion in the tent.

We had pizza for dinner and stove top chocolate cake for dessert.  Yum!

Lucy put together an awesome Jeopardy game.  I think we all learned something new about the other members of our family.  And the kids loved the prizes.  I loved that there was a BYU category.

Then it was time for some feats of strength.  At our last reunion, it was push-ups.  This time it was pole climbing.

Only two adults were brave enough to try.  I think their efforts are pretty impressive.

Henry gets by with a little help from his friends.

Ian scaled it with ease.  Like a coconut tree-climbing pro.

 Natty too:

But perhaps the highlight of day one was meeting the newest member of our family, Daniel.  Being the littlest and so darn cute kinda made him the rock star of the bunch.

Stay tuned for many more Hatch family adventures...