Slight, ok major change of vacation plans

It won't let me move my typed text around, so just scroll down to after the pictures for the full story.

Ivan holding an injured snake.


We paid a nice man from the flea market, that was just up the beach, to take these pictures of us on our last night there.

Nicole's lovely braided hair, before she took it out. She left it like this until after the first few days of school, and one Sunday for church.

Orin in front of a group of bananas, outside next to where we had lunch on the safari day trip.

After our swim up river, and cliff diving. It was a lot of fun.

Don't you just love pictures like this??

Anybody need a taxi ride? These were all over the streets, sometimes with 3-4 people on them.

A cock fight demonstration.

We were grinding coffee beans, then got to sample our handiwork. It was pretty gross. This was one of the first pictures I took on vacation. Patrick says that they are in love, and kissing each other. We couldn't convince him that they were probably fighting, and trying to eat each other.

Waiting at the bar for the unlimited free slushies. (strawberry daquiriy or pina colada).

Eating at the Mexican restuarant.

We decided not to go to Ukraine. We went to Puerto Plata Dominican Republic instead. Some of the things that factored into us changing our plans are: we weren't able to get a hold of Quin & Rebecca's older sister, the flying/tickets were a little more complicated, we were concerned about Quin being able to be the translator (he was feeling pressured), some of the older boys (who have been there before), kept saying that the little kids were going to get lost, etc., etc. We also didn't feel right about it. So, we decided to go to somewhere warm, tropical, and beachy. We considered Puerto Rico, Hawaii, & Mexico. The Domican Republic had one of the lower cost of all-inclusive resorts, and was pretty close, flight wise, and the flights looked good. All 10 of us made it on the same flights down there, and on the way back 8 of us were in first class. (Ivan and Patrick sat in the bulk head row, because Patrick wasn't old enough for first class.) Most of you know how good Ivan is at getting motel rooms, car rentals, and flights pretty cheap on Expedia, Hot Wire, etc. But, being that we now fly on stand-by, we didn't want to book our rooms, until we knew for sure when we were getting down there. Ivan was on his laptop in the Atlanta airport, and on the plane, but had to turn it off before he could confirm our rooms. So, we get to the airport, and for any of you who have traveled over-seas, you know that the internet is sometimes a bit of a joke, and difficult to use. We ended up taking a taxi, (a Toyota mini-van, with 10 people+luggage), to one of the resorts that we saw and liked on Expedia.com. We get there, and Ivan is talking to them at the front desk, and they were quoting us like $5-6,000 for 3 rooms for 1 week, even though it was a lot cheaper on Expedia. So, Ivan paid for internet time, on their computer in their lobby, and got 5 rooms for $2,800 for a week. (The way Expedia was working, you could only have 2 people per room.) Me and the 3-4 little kids sat out in a grassy area and watched some tourists do rope climbing, while the big boys went betweeen Ivan & I, while he was getting our rooms. And they kept giving me updates on how things were going. After booking our rooms, we went to eat and explore the resort while they got our rooms ready. We went down by the beach after dinner, and of course several of the kids got wet. The resort was ran/owned by companies in Canada and England. So there were quite a few english speaking tourists. After breakfast we didn't see much of Kimball & Quin, because of all the pretty girls there. Finally after a few days of that, we said, ok we are eating together, and you need to check in with us periodically throughout the day. We did some of the scheduled kids activities. The room that Ivan, Orin, Patrick, and I stayed in, was right outside the wave pool, that had water slides as well. We couldn't have asked for a better room. Most days we went to the beach, and swam in the pools. On one of the days, we paid, and took a safari-type trip, where we got to see some native fruit farms, men carving things out of stone, a cock fight demonstration (it's legal down there), see and climb up 7 waterfalls, and go cliff jumping. Here are some pictures from our vacation. Overall it was a very relaxing, fun vacation, just like vacations should be.