Lauren Elizabeth

Dominican republic

I need to go through all of Mike's go pro pictures to add more to this trip. We had such an amazing time in the DR. It was my first time leaving my kids for a night. That part was super hard. They went home to Utah with my parent's after graduation and I had to say goodbye to them at the airport. We then rushed home to finish all the last minute packing that we needed to do. We said our last goodbyes and I cried some more. Then early the next morning we got on our flights. We got really lucky on our way to the DR and got on both of our flights with no problems. We landed and got our rental car. It took us about 40 minutes to drive to Casa De Campo where we would be staying. We got to the house and met Fransisca the house keeper. She was the sweetest, but hardly spoke any English. That made our conversations the whole week pretty funny as we all tried to communicate with her through our broken Spanish. We hit up the beach and the pool pretty much everyday. I read 2 books, which felt so good since I hadn't read a book in ages. We picked up the Blomquists on Wednesday. From then on it was pretty much a party on the golf carts the whole time. We went out to eat at so many amazing restaurants. We played games pretty much every night. One day we took a boat over the Catalina island and did snorkeling and just hung out on the beach. The water was so warm and clear there. You could see all the fish so easily. We spent a lot of time at the pool, where the boys came up with all different kinds of diving and racing games for us to play. The boys got to do a gold day on Teeth of the Dog, a top course in the Caribbean. We went into La Romana for church on Sunday, but got there late because we had the wrong time online. They were super nice and blessed some bread and water for us after the meeting. We took the missionaries out to lunch and hung out with them for a bit. We drove around La Romana a bit, but the driving there will scare you. Everything is a suggestion. People are driving down the wrong side of the road and going through red lights. It can give you a bit of a panic attack. We did a little bit of site seeing at some ruins near where we were staying. The boys once again had lots of fun being goofs everywhere we went.

Our trip home did not go so smoothly. I got stuck in Atlanta for almost 2 days and Mike had to go to JFK. It was a bit of a headache, but we made it home to our girls and I was so happy to see them. I missed them so much.