Cooks Beach

(All of the pictures are massive.  But it took me so long to load them in the first place, I can't be bothered doing it all again.  So be prepared for some unexpected closeups.)

My family used to go to our batch in Kennedy Bay, up in coromandel for the summer.  Then it got sold.  Then Matt married Renee who's family go to cooks beach and slowly but surely we've all made our way up there too.  So that's where we had our summer fun this year.

All our family was able to come.  Like ALL of us.  That hasn't happened in about 5 years.  So it was awesome.  We rented two houses across the road from each other.  We played and swam and had so much fun.  Unfortunately, I had issues with my camera and it somehow deleted all the pictures that weren't taken on an auto setting aka, all the good ones.  I'm so sad coz there are a bunch of pictures of the boys together on the beach that were awesome that have been taken by the camera gods.  So you'll have to make do with the leftovers. :(

It was Vili's first real time at the baech (he'd been before to the beach in Wellington, but that's more of a coastline then a beach.).  Surprise surprise, he loooooved it!  He got to splash in the water and eat all the sand, fun fun fun.

Malachi got to play with all his cousins aka his peeps.  He went fishing on the dock and caught some little fish, went out in the boat with Grandad and caught some monster crayfish in the net.  He was so much more confident in the water, despite it being 20 degrees colder then the water in Hawaii.  I had to be careful how far out i let him go.

We went on a little hike up to Whitianga rock. The view was amazing, and the exercise was greatly needed.

There was a ferry that ran between Cooks Beach and Whitianga (the closest town with a supermarket etc).  Driving it would have taken about 40minutes, or you can take this 2 minute boat ride.  It was awesome.

My brothers tried skim boarding.  They were pretty awesome.  Then Tui tried.  He was pretty hilarious.

While we were there we visited the cemetary and found the headstone for my dad's dad's grandparents. Talk about luck! Me and mum used sticks to clean it up a bit, scrape off the moss.

Because my whole family was there, we got to take a new family picture, the first with all of us in 6 years.

The last day we were there, Mum and Dad put an offer in for a section there and bought it.  So it looks like this is the first of many cooks beach adventures to come.