We started the summer out with heading to Wisconsin right away to visit the Weis’ with time on the lake, cousin time and a farm breakfast. The kids just can’t get enough of their cousins Hot wheel jeep. Wes celebrated his 8th Birthday with family in Wisconsin.
We jumped right back in to our annual group camping trip to Cape Lookout. A crazy number of families, something like 60 people hanging out at the beach. Kids were all about boogie boarding, building sand structures, soccer on the beach and even mussel hunting. A bit of rain this year but that didn’t keep us down.
Summer also brought berry picking, trips to the swimming pool, swim team practice and meets, and backpacking! This year we did a 4th of July backpacking trip to the Eagle Cap Wilderness. The first day of hiking in was rain, rain and more rain. We waited until afternoon to start hiking, hoping the rain would clear, but the 6 miles in was wet and COLD! The first 2 miles went ok, but after that it was VERY cold. Wes would stop every few hundred feet to scream, Fiona kept going and going, Elliot finally in the last half mile asked mom “Mom, I know you are as miserable as me, how do you pretend like it isn’t.” We sent Mac to run ahead and set up camp to have a warm dry place to go. Crystal and the 3 kids hiked into camp after the rain had stopped and the mosquitos had started to warm up. We got to camp and immediately got all the kids into the tent and dry. What initially felt like a total disaster soon turned into warm sun, moisture turning to fog as it evaporated off the granite and kids were begging to get out to tent to explore and play Uno. In the words of Wes “I am sorry I said this is awful, this is beautiful and amazing and I am glad we are here.” Mac and I were not so convinced at first.
The next day we nicked up to the high alpine lake. Skinny dipping and walking out to island on the lake, with family time and card games made for a great evening. The 3rd day we hiked out the 9 miles. Long day but the kids did great. We finished the hike with berry shakes, go cards and a dip in the lake. All in all a wonderful trip to the Wallowa.
Watching Elliots VERY hot soccer game.
The next weekend we were off to Timothy Lake to run Crystal’s 50K Ultra-marathon! More lake time, paddle boarding and time with some friends.
Crystal and Mac were then off to Enchanments to do the through hike. It was a busy week!
We continued with summer camp - including Elliot at Girls Build camp (welding / cement / woodworking and more!) and took advantage of Portland to get some mountain biking done! Even though there were some crashes. We were also in the throws of planning for our upcoming move to New Zealand / Aoteroa - more about that soon!! Elliot even got to go to her very first overnight camp and rode horses at camp Cleawox!!
"Then it was off to Maine for Cook's camp week 2025!! We got to watch the Portland Sea Dogs minor league baseball game win (in a GRAND SLAM), swim in the lake, go tubing on the motor boat, participate in the Wilton Blueberry festival fun run and Crystal + Mac finally completed the cooks' camp 1/2 marathon!!!
Grandma and Grandpa Cook came out for a visit at the end of the summer and we got to go to a Thorns game and then Grandma Cook / Wes went to a Tumbers game (a birthday present) that included the coach getting a yellow card and Grandma getting in a shouting match with unruly soccer hooligans!!!
And as fast as it began - Summer was over - but not before Wes won "most competitive" on the Irvington club swim team and we went to the neighborhood crawdad boil! Elliot was NOT a fan of the crawdads!
School started off with a bang! We love the community of Alameda - even if it was a bit odd to be starting school knowing that in 6 weeks we would be leaving to move to NZ. Labor day weekend brought our traditional camping trip to coast with the Alahood along with soccer (Go United), fall ball, Wes graduating from swimming and more!!
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