Anniversary Trip

For our one year anniversary, we wanted to take a big trip somewhere we had never been. We had talked about it for 6 months and never seemed to quite get around to booking. We thought about Ghana, Cook Islands (too expensive) Europe (too cold) back to Thailand? Well a month before we were to leave we still hadn't decided. We were originally going to go on our honeymoon to Dominican Republic but Russ changed it last minute because he had heard it was too rainy in November. I thought it was worth the risk so we booked a week in the D.R. We were able to do lots of fun things. We crossed off one of my bucket list items and swam with dolphins! I LOVED it. We also took a boat ride out to an island called Saona Island one day, sea kayaked, snorkeled and vegged out by the pool. I think I will have to break this trip up by days, I love pictures too much! We stayed at a nice little hotel a couple hours away from the airport. Flying in was so beautiful and green! There were little fires all over the island when we first flew in. I still don't know what that was about. We found quickly that we should have paid better attention in high school Spanish as NO one spoke English. On our 2 hour drive to our resort, I tried really hard to remember enough to talk to him. I was able to find out his name, his birthday, where he lived and how many kids he had. I didn't think "Where is the library" was very appropriate for the time, but that's the only other thing I remembered how to say. We arrived at our hotel and the party began. Our view from our room

We spent a lot of time relaxing by the pool, watching people do aerobics and zumba. One day they even invited us to play soccer on the beach. It was fun. All the guys on my team were from Italy so there was little communication with me.

There was a cool little bar in the pool that Russ had many non alcoholic Pina Coladas. I have a feel the bar tenders hadn't had many request for that from a man because they would always ask him about 3 times if that was for sure what he wanted.

I am next to certain 90% of the people staying at our resort were Italian. All the locals either new Spanish, or Italian. Everyone we met were Italian. Russ and I wanted a little break from the pool and decided to go play some ping pong. I love ping pong! We get so competitive! There were 2 tables next to each other, and on the other table, was a cute little Italian kid and his dad (who I thought was his grandpa). After he and his so finished their game, the guy asked me if he could play Russ. Of course he asked this in Italian so after I gave him a blank stair and shrugged my shoulders to say Im sorry, I don't understand...he did the motion on a ping pong swing and pointed to Russ and pointed to himself. The next thing we had folks was a REAL ping pong game between Russ and the Italian and he was GOOD! Little dude wanted to play with me, so I taught him some English.. "Ready? Set? Go!" It was so cute to hear him try and say it.

There was a cool dock just outside of our resort. To get there though, you had to pass all the beach vendors. Luckily, they didn't speak any English at all. They would start speaking Italian and we were like...we don't know that either! Makes for a quick escape!

After narrowly escaping the shops, we got to the dock. We loved it out there. There was hardly anyone ever there, and Russ loved to snorkel around it. I loved the peace and quiet to read. Every half an hr or so I would jump in the ocean and swim around and cool off and go back to reading, while searching for the blue fins to make sure he hadn't been eaten by a shark.

Look how perfect this beach is. For some reason we always luck out with vacant beaches.

Russ would come in from snorkeling just as the sun was going down. He could snorkel all day.

We would walk to the end of the dock and Russ would practice his dives. Thanks to shark week, I no longer like to swim in the ocean after the sun goes down. Prime shark feeding time.

I love being out as the sunsets and still being warm. You don't get that too often in Utah.

We would walk back to our resort, just as the sun was almost down and get ready to feast. This is longest blog post. I started this post the first of December, and since our Internet is so darn slow, I give up after uploading ever few pictures. Back to our trip.. The food at our resort was very mediocre. Why I made myself sick every meal stuffing my face with just ok food is beyond me. We finally discovered that if we went to the lobby first thing in the morning, we could make reservations for nicer restaurants, also free. Best thing we did.

The next day we were laying out by the pool. We would lay out for a half an hour, swim for a half an hour, go eat, and repeat the process. One of the hotel entertainers came over and invited us to play soccer on the beach. They had made two teams of all hotel guest, all of which didn't speak English. I was on a good team made up of mostly Italians. It was a lot of fun playing bare foot on the beach with strangers. Those are like all of my favorite things at once...my hubby, soccer, beach! After a very hot sweaty game, we headed back to our little spot for a cool off in the ocean.

We walked back to the prettiest sunset!

This is the most awful picture of me, but that night we went to a dinner we had reserved at one of those restaurants where the chefs cook in front of you, and you eat Miso soup and they throw shrimp in your face...anyway, this couple next to me fought the entire time and the wife was SO mad. It was so uncomfortable because we were all sitting so close. The second they finished their meal the woman was up out and the man followed timidly behind.

We decided the next day to go sea kayaking. We were both so excited and saved it for a day we didn't have anything so we could be out as long as we wanted. We got our kayak and started paddling out. We took a couple pictures out in the ocean the first 5 minutes we were out

We paddled far out into the ocean and the water was so clear and felt so warm. We decided to rest up on the paddles and just relax and see where we floated. Russ suggested we paddle a little closer to shore as we drifted further out to sea. He said, "Chels, Im getting fat!" Me, "Russ, you are far from fat." Russ, "No seriously, Im like in water back here". I look behind me and started crying I was laughing so hard. Sure enough, he was totally sitting in water and I was out of the air! We laughed and laughed and decided to start paddling in. And then paddled faster and faster as Russ kept getting further into water. We go on shore like 15 minutes after left and tried to drag the kayak on shore and it was HEAVY. That's when we realized, Russ is not getting fat, the plug on the boat was out and the boat filled with water! It was so funny, and we laughed so hard we decided we would just leave that experience at that.