Hive 09- The Rest of the Story

During the whole weekend of Hive, we all ate wonderfully! On Saturday, we had a yummy breakfast of custom-shaped pancakes and professional waffles, a crowd-pleasing lunch of hamburgers and hotdogs on the grill, and adults-only kababs for dinner (after the kids had gone to bed)! On Sunday, we had french toast casserole for breakfast, leftovers and sandwiches for lunch, then everyone headed home. Ohh... and let's not forget the yummy smores on the firepit on Saturday night! The food situation for the whole weekend was great because everyone pitched in and made their favorite recipes for different meals so there wasn't any one person responsible for all of it. Nikki and Unkie Joe did the hundreds of dollars worth of shopping (at 3 different grocery stores!) so that we'd have all of the ingredients on hand and no one would have to run out during Hive to do shopping for each meal. I don't think anyone spent any time feeling hungry the entire weekend!

In addition to the tons o' waterplay, Hive 09's Saturday and Sunday were jam packed with music, basketball, bowling, cows (yes, cows!), and more!

The cows have been coming close to the fence lots lately, so I had Nikki pick up a bag of oranges to feed them, just in case they did. My kids always love feeding the cows, so I thought the rest of the kids would too. And they did! Because Macy had chased the cows away before the kids had a chance to get out to feed them, Ben hopped the fence (literally) and went to round up the cows. While many of the kids came closer, only one of them would come over to actually eat the oranges. The kids loved taking turns throwing the orange slices to the cows (and some even just ate the oranges themselves).

Saturday night we decided to feed the kids early (well, really at a normal time) and get them to bed so that the adults could enjoy cooking our kababs on the fire. This worked out really well, and left the adults with more smores! :) After dinner, a few of us stayed outside and chatted by the fire, while the others came inside for another poker game. We'd had such a packed Saturday, that most of us called it a night not too long after midnight!

Sunday morning, we made sure all of the kids were dressed in their ADORABLE Hive pjs, and paraded everyone outside for our annual "Generation Deuce" pictures. We had two 4 year olds, three 3 year olds, three not-quite-2 year olds, one just-turned 1 year old, and a 4 month old... that's 10 kids under 5 years old! With that many little ones, I'm surprised it went as well as it did. I have to admit though, the adults trying to get the kids to smile and look at the camera was a show in itself (myself included as I did the "Baby Got Back" dance)! Nikki did a great job stepping in for our poor, sick Erica as the official photographer. She got some great pictures of the whole group, siblings, the dads with their kids (for Father's Day), and friend pictures. I see many of these pictures going up on everyone's walls! Here are some of my personal favorites with my kids:

I absolutely LOVE this one where all of the kids started getting restless... Zach has disappeared, Corgan is on his way out, Halle and Leah are the only one still looking at the camera, and it looks like Erin is saying "Who is going to take control here?!?" I love it!

After pictures, some people started heading home, and the rest of us just did whatever we felt like doing. We got back on the waterslide (which was supposed to have been picked up Sunday morning, but wasn't!), did some body tracing, some people went bowling, and really just spent time recovering from the busy previous days. Once everyone had left to go home, the house seemed so quiet and empty. We had a wonderful weekend, and miss our friends already!

Enjoy the many albums covering the rest of Hive 09:
Saturday Fun
Saturday Night Live
The Photoshoot (setup and resulting pics
Body Tracing
Lazy Sunday
Kiddie Cam (all pics taken by the kids)

And, in closing, here's one of my favorites that Nikki took of Halle and Annabelle: