We just returned from the most wonderful reunion weekend with my siblings' families and my parents. Every other year one of my siblings takes a turn to plan out a 3-night reunion to get us all together. This year it was Jordan and Amanda's turn, and they found a great rental house in Lava Hot Springs for a long weekend of togetherness and cousin time.
This weekend was also our trial run checking in on how our children do sleeping outside of their own beds. The last time we stayed somewhere besides our own beds overnight was during our move about 9 months ago. The nights were so awful that we basically swore off overnight travel for the entirety of 2025, knowing we'd dip our toes back in for a checkin at this reunion. The kids mostly did really great! Jack still had a hard time falling asleep, as he always does, but for the first time ever he felt brave about having a cousin sleepover and the older 3 boys spent most of the nights camping out in the bunk room. In hindsight, there's a good chance that the only reason this worked is that Jared and I were also sleeping in the bunk room. But we'll take any progress, and Jack sleeping through the nights with cousins in his room is progress.
Alice did pretty well too, all things considered. If we had transitioned her out of sleeping in a crib by now it probably would have gone off without a hitch, but we haven't been able to do that yet. (We do give her the option to try and sleep on Jack's bottom bunk whenever she asks, and we let her know that if she can stay in bed then she can sleep there overnight, but if she leaves his room then she'll have to sleep in her crib. She never lasts longer than 3 minutes.) We fully planned to have made the transition by the reunion, but it didn't work out so she had a really hard time falling asleep in her bottom bunk and staying there. I had to share a bed with her in the end, but luckily the bunk beds were pretty big. Fortunately there was a spare crib in my parents' spacious walk-in closet, so Alice spent the last two nights in there and did great.
There was such a great balance of fun, adventure, and enjoying relaxing/playing at the rental home. We each take turns making a meal, and we ate really well.
On our first full day there we spent the day at Lava Hot Springs pool. Everyone had a blast. It was fun to be able to do the diving board and some slides with Jack. Alice had a blast too.
The rental home had a pickleball court that the kids spent a lot of time scootering around, plus a hot tub and fire pit and putting green. It's so fun to have the older kids be big enough to run around together the entire time. I barely talked to Jack all weekend. He had a blast. Love that he has two cousin friends close in age to have fun with. Alice is getting to the point where she can run off and play unsupervised a bit too. She had a blast too. They were both sad to leave. And now for a few pictures:
