Hinton Sibling Reunion

October 11-14th we hosted the Hinton Sibling Reunion.  All attended excepted Clark and Nan.  Nan's family had a reunion at the same time that they attended.  The picture below doesn't show Mark Grant, as he got sick during the reunion and this picture was taken on the last day.

Thursday  

We gathered on Thursday night at our house where we hosted a lasagna dinner.  After dinner, Rick was in charge of a Rook tournament.  Rook is an important Hinton tradition.

Don won 1st place, and Jim and I tied for 2nd.  It was a very proud moment!! I may have celebrated loudly!!

Friday

Out of towners bunked with in- towners for the night.  We all met at IHOP for breakfast.

I ordered this delicious spinach/mushroom omelet.  If you go there, you should order it.  It was so good.  I had it many years ago in a SLC IHOP and have dreamed about it since!  I was so happy it was still on the menu.

After breakfast, we headed to a chapel in Hurricane where we met a Hinton cousin- Wayne (Kendall) Hinton from Cedar.  Wayne is an historian extraordinaire.  He has done history work for the church and is very sharp.  He gave a very interesting presentation on the Washington county CCC camps and the history of those.

After Wayne's presentation, we drove to Virgin where we viewed the property that John Nock Hinton owned.  It is a beautiful setting.  But the Virgin river runs right through it (where you see the row of trees) and more than once the John Nock Hinton family was flooded out.  So they resettled in Hurricane.  It is through John Nock Hinton that all of the southern Utah Hintons come.  A humble carpenter, immigrant from England, left quite a legacy and posterity.

We then walked up to the Virgin town square.  They have done a nice job of renovating the town square and old jailhouse.

They have erected a monument honoring the early settlers of Virgin.

You can see John Nock Hinton and his wife, Emma Spendlove.  Then their son John Maurice Hinton and his wife, Nancy Stanworth.

We then drove to Hurricane Subway shop and purchased sandwiches for our picnic.  I had previously purchased chips, grapes and treats.  We enjoyed a nice picnic in Hurricane's newest park.  It was a lovely setting by Grandpa's Pond.

After we ate, each family reported on how they did during the last year on family history work.  Each sibling is assigned one of the eight family lines to work on.  Ken's report was most impressive until Jim reported.  He gave each of us a book he wrote during this last year about our ancestors.  That Jim!

That evening, we had a progressive dinner.  We started with appetizers at Mark and Kathy's.

This was the first time I had been in Mark and Kathy's beautiful home.

Then we went to Lorene's for salad.

I forgot to take pictures of the main dish and the dessert.  We had the main dish at Ada's.  She made Café Rio Pork burritos with all of the trimmings.  It was delicious.  We served dessert at our house:  Cheesecake from Costco with fresh strawberries and blueberry pie filling.
Don shared a presentation with us on:

We fit pretty comfortably in our basement.

It was a very interesting presentation as we see how the Lord is preparing China, and all of Asia for the gospel.

Jim, Ken's oldest brother, is a master at family trivia games.  He keeps detailed records and draws from those to create fun games.  After the presentation and dessert, Jim conducted a trivia quiz, consisting of questions about family history as well as general trivia..  This time, he just read a question and let us raise our hands to answer. I was particularly proud that I was the first to answer the questions on Merlin Olson. It may have been the most fun part of the whole reunion.  As a result of a question, Don shared an embarrassing moment from his childhood when, on stage, he forgot the poem he was reciting. He said he stood there on stage, saying to himself, "Dang!  My head is so full of poems nothing else is ever gonna fit in there."   That prompted Jim to share a similar story from his childhood about when he and Dave did a cowboy song number in cowboy costumes on stick horses for a community event when they were little. It went fine, but unfortunately his school teacher attended the event and the next day asked Jim for an encore performance that did not go so well.   It had us all laughing so hard.  I think we can all relate, as most of us have had such embarrassing moments.  It was fun and a highlight of the reunion for me.

Saturday

We started Saturday with a temple session.  It was so nice to be all together in the temple.  After the 10:00 session, we went downstairs to the cafeteria.  Because Don is a member of the temple presidency, we had a very delicious dinner in the president's dining room in the cafeteria.  We could choose between salmon and beef.  I had the salmon and have since been all over the internet trying to find a recipe that compares to that sweet glazed salmon.  

We then came to our house for napping, visiting, game playing for the afternoon.  We had leftovers for dinner.

Then we held our business meeting.

We then went to a play in downtown St. George at the historic Electric theater.  Carolyn Murset, a family friend, put on a one-woman play about her grandmother.  It was really well done.

Carolyn is very talented.

Sunday

  We attended Lorene's ward in Washington because they met at 9:00 am.  After church, we met back at Lorene's for lunch: sandwiches, potato salad, chips, etc and more visiting until we had to break up for the travelers to leave.

It was a wonderful reunion.  We are grateful everyone is willing to make the effort to attend each year. We cherish our moments together.