Punta Cana

We shipped the kids off to grandma and grandpa's house for a week and went in search of some sun. We definitely found sun! Saturday we flew to Miami, and spent the night there, then woke up Sunday morning and flew to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

Anywhere with an airport that looks like this is my kind of place!

We stayed here, at the Excellence resort.

We spent the rest of Sunday just getting settled and walking around the resort. There were super pretty gardens all around the resort. We took a little path through a garden and found a little pond with flamingos in it, but before we could get any pictures I was attacked by mesquitos, and literally ran as fast as I could to get out of there. I had 19 bites on my back and all up and down my arms, one on my pinky and even one on the bottom of my foot! So that was a pleasant way to start of my week of relaxing.

Monday-Lazy day. We woke up when our bodies told us to, rather than when Maxon came and jumped in our bed, that was something new. We had breakfast then it was off to lounge by/in the pool.

Our room was actually in that peach building behind the pool, so we could walk right out our door and be at this pool. We floated around in here for a while on the floaty bed things, and unfortunately later found out our 15 spf was no match for the caribbean sun. Oops! We both got pretty burned. After lunch we went for a walk along the beach.

These 2 macaws hung out here on this fence post the entire week. How cool/pretty are they?! It made me want to get one! We took crackers to them to try and bribe them to let us hold them. Unfortunately they weren't having it. We saw another guy walk right up and put his arm out and one jumped right on, but they didn't like us that much I guess.
Tuesday-We took a bus in the morning to a little private area called Cap Cana that was about an hour away. It was beautiful! There are condos and shops and restaurants there, and no locals live there. There was a marina full of yachts and big fancy fishing boats and we were told a few different celebs own condos and houses there (Shakira, Julio Iglesias). Once we were there we got on a boat with a group of people and went out a little ways to do some snorkeling,
Me holding some kind of star fish thing. The guide I was following kept diving down and bringing back different things for me to hold.

This is a sea urchin I think. It totally freaked me out when he first put it in my hands. It's poky and has weird suction things on the bottom. So if you put it flat on your hand it suctions to you!

After snorkeling we got back on the "party" boat. Whenever we asked for "virgin" drinks, people thought we were absolutely crazy! It was actually kind of funny to see the reactions. "But you're on vacation!" "It's free!" "No rum with your coke?!" One waiter actually laughed in my face, "pina colada, no alcohol?!" You'd think they had never heard of someone not drinking alcohol. Anyway, we were kind of the party poopers on the boat who wouldn't drink, but oh well.


I did learn the merengue, but of course had to do it with one of the guide guys because there was no way Trent was having any part of that. The party boat eventually made it's way back to Cap Cana where we had a fancy lunch waiting for us. It started off with a salad topped with basically every ocean creature. I had no idea what I was putting in my mouth, and was pretty freaked out by most of it, but tried to do it with a smile. For the most part, it was pretty good. The main course was a humungous lobster, some kind of fish filet and some shrimp. It was all really yummy (probably not so much if you are a seafood hater). After lunch we took a bus to the prettiest beach I've ever seen.

Seriously, the sand was really that white and so fine and the water was turquoise and beautiful. They had (of course) more drinks and fresh fruit to snack on while we lounged on the beach.
Seriously, the prettiest ever. And the nicest staff ever to wait on you hand and foot.

After lounging on the beach for a couple hours we took the bus back to our hotel. It was a fun, hot, tiring day. The staff really were some of the nicest people I've ever met, most were Haitian. They could all speak like 3 or 4 languages too. Most spoke spanish, french and english. In our group I think we were the only Americans. At lunch we sat by a couple from France and a couple from Spain. It was pretty amazing to me that the staff could go from speaking french to the frenchies, then spanish to the spaniards, then english to us.

It's crazy how tired being out the in the sun can make you. We were both pretty wiped out when we got back to the hotel. We took a much needed shower, then had dinner, and just as everyone else was coming out for the night, we headed to bed :)

Wednesday-Another lazy day. Woke up late, lounged by the pool, ate too much.

Thursday-Took a bus to a marina where we caught a boat out to a floating island. There were a few different activities to do there. We snorkeled...

Another thing to do here was swim with the sting rays. They had a section roped off where there were a bunch of sting rays in there. We got to go in and swim around with them and even hold them. They're weird and slimy and squishy, but pretty cool.

We spent a few hours here, then took the boat back. Then another hour long bus ride back to the hotel. That was one bummer about our resort was it was basically an hour away from everything. Any kind of excursion required a long bus ride, and so did the airport. But, what are you gonna do? When we got back to the hotel we showered and had dinner, then decided to call it a night (as if any other night we weren't in bed by the time everyone else was coming out to party for the night!).

Friday-Welcome to the longest day of my life! We had to catch a shuttle to the airport at 3:30 AM!! People were literally still out at the casino when we were waking up and wheeling our luggage to the lobby. So wrong! Once we made it to the airport we got to stand in the longest line ever to check in. We finally got through, and got to our gate.
After a little more waiting, we got to board.
Goodbye beautiful Punta Cana! We had to fly to Miami, where once again, we waited in lines to get through customs then we had a couple hour layover, then flew to Dallas. In Dallas, we had another 2 hour layover, and just when I thought the day couldn't get any longer our 6:15 pm flight turned into an 8:15 flight because the plane had problems so we had to change gates and planes. Finally, 8:15 we are on our way to SLC. We pulled into our driveway around 11:30, totally exhausted! And to our surprise found our sleeping babies tucked in their beds! We were supposed to drive down and get the kids the next day, but my mom is amazing and drove them up and surprised us! We had lots of fun and even though we are both itchy and peeling now from getting sunburned, it was totally worth it! Thanks grandma and grandpa for taking care of the little munchkins for the week! I know they had a blast and probably didn't want to come home. I'm glad they did though. We missed them a lot!