weekly wonder: twenty-seven

Well this week's adventure was a bit different and took a lot of coordinating.  We took a trip to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.  I can't give myself any of the credit... it was an all paid trip thanks to Jonathan's company who offered to fly all employees and significant others to the resort for five days of sun worshiping.  I am sure you are wondering how I managed to smuggle Noah in on that trip? Well, I felt like I couldn't travel to another country without him yet... he's still so young, we didn't have anyone that could watch him for that length of time really and he's still free to fly as a lap child, so I decided... Why not?... Let's do this!

We left Tuesday night by red eye flight.  Our flight stopped in Atlanta, Georgia and then went on to the Dominican.  The red eye was tough, but not because of Noah... just because we were already exhausted and in squished seats, really excited about the idea of laying on the soft beaches.  Our flight from Georgia to DR seemed a little easier because we sat in first class.  That was super spacious and lovely. Unfortunately, all of our flights were delayed by at least an hour and we ended up having to make an emergency landing in Orlando, Florida for another passenger's health so even though we were in first class... the trip seemed never ending.  We were starving and cranky all while Noah slept or made cute with the flight attendants.  When we finally got to the airport we realized that Noah's carseat had been left behind in Atlanta and were going to have wait a day or two for it to catch up to us.  Thankfully we were on a tour bus to get to our resort so the car seat wouldn't have fit properly in the seat anyways.

When we finally got to the resort we were all pretty hungry and cranky and it was a whole 3 hours later than expected, so we decided to skip all adventures and just grab some dinner.  Noah was too tired at this point even for dinner.  So we quickly shoveled food in our mouths and went back to the room to put him to bed.  Basically the entire day was traveling which kind of sucked, but whatever... we were there and totally pumped!  That night Jonathan and I ended up getting really sick from who knows what food.  Could have been dinner? Could have been airplane food? We didn't know, but we were seriously up all night sick.  Thankfully, after lots of cranberry juice, bottled water and chicken noodle soup (yeah room service had it), we survived!

Anyways, I don't think I am going to give you a play-by-play of the entire trip... neither you or I have time for that.  Hah! Let me just say it was amazing!  We rolled out of bed around 9, had room service about 9:45 every morning on our balcony (which had such beautiful views).  Then we would head off to the beach for a few hours or until lunch time.  Around lunch time we would switch to the pool because the pool had a grill, then we would nap around the pool, followed by playing again at the beach.  We would make sure and have one last dip in the pool before we would head in to get ready dinner.  A few nights we even did a little night swimming at the pool with some friends. The weather and water were just perfect!  We were so very spoiled by the beaches and pools at this resort.

The day we left, Noah and I got up extra early so we could swim in the ocean and pool before having to leave for the airport.  I didn't care if I still had sand stuck to various parts of my body, I was determined to soak up as much lovely beach as possible.   It was really hard to leave, but when we finally stepped in through our front door and were able to sleep in our own beds that was also a big sigh of relief.  As much fun as a vacation is, vacationing with a toddler can be pretty exhausting just because you have to keep busy and have an even more watchful eye than you normally would in your own environment.  I definitely don't regret it though.  We had some wonderful sweet memories and over-all such an amazing adventure!

PS: I assure you that Jonathan was on this trip too... he was hiding in the shade most of the time because being the TRUE McCaffrey that he is, he suffers from what I like to call a little "unluck of the Irish"...He burns SO easily!  So he stayed mostly slathered up in spf 80 under towels and umbrellas. He came out in the ocean with us a few times, but only for quick trips before he would dart for cover again and watch us play in the waves.