This will be the first part of multiple posts of our trip to the Dominican Republic to visit Daryl's parents who are on a mission there. My goal is to have all of my pages complete in the next week, but I don't know if I can do it that fast. Last spring and summer we started looking at flights to see if it was feasible to take our whole family to the Dominican Republic. We had been saving up sky-miles for years to go on Daryl's dream beach vacation with the whole family. We had checked numerous times to try and get the best deal of 35,000 miles per ticket, but they were pretty non-existent. Daryl happened to check one day and found some in November, and they coincided perfectly with Daryl's parents 2 1/2 day break they get every six weeks. We didn't want to miss the opportunity and quickly made our purchase. From there the preparations began. First we had to get passports for all of the kids. I decided to save some money and take my own pictures. I read the instructions and it said to look straight into the camera, head not tilted and to not smile. I never thought I would get Dylan to cooperate with that, but I was lucky and got the picture on my first try. I thought he looked so cute and grown up (he was only 13 months at the time).
Taking kids on a trip can be very stressful. I would sometimes stop in a panic when I thought about taking my baby to a third world country. The flights we chose had us stopping in Atlanta both ways with an overnight stay. I thought this would be best with Dylan (and the other kids too) to break up the flights. We chose the same hotel for both stays. This worked out perfect since on our way home Daryl (who found a few weeks before we had to leave) had to head to Richmond, VA for work and so I was on my own with all of the kids once we got to Atlanta. Since we had done the same thing on our way down, I already knew where to find the shuttle to the hotel, how to catch the shuttle on the way back to the airport, and where to check in. Things worked out great and it was such a relief when we sat down at the terminal. We were these a whole 5 minutes and the kids had gone for a bathroom break when they announced that the plane would now be taking off at a different gate at a completely different terminal, which was at the other side of the airport. So we had to pack all of our stuff up again along with a heavy car seat and try and make our way to the new gate. Thinking back on it now I can say it was easy, but I know I kept repeating over and over a line from one of Sister Beck's talks, "I can do hard things". On the last flight I had purposely left an open seat in between Ryan and I near the back in hopes that no one would take it and I could put the car seat there. It paid off and I was able to put Dylan there so I didn't have to hold him the whole flight home. The flight was full, and that was about the only seat left.
We are so glad we made the trip with the kids. We had such an incredible experience and the kids loved the time that we spent there. For weeks after we got home I kept hearing "Ola" and "Como estas". And Madisyn's favorite "une via, une via", since every street we drove on seemed to be a one way.
Here are the beginnings of our trip:
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