We went to the Dominican Republic to visit our friends, Marv and Lindsay. They have been working at a school there this past year. They made the arrangements for everything and were excellent companions.
The first half of the vacation we stayed at the northern coast city of Cabarete. We were in a nice condo close to the beach. There were a lot of restaurants along the coast and we had access to some great pools. The boys drooled at the idea of kite surfing, which is a very big thing in this area. They deemed it too expensive (or maybe their wives did, I'm not sure) and settled for riding the waves with some borrowed boogie boards several times. We also did a waterfall tour. This was rather intense and beautiful, but wildly fun! The tour guides were pushing and pulling us up 12 waterfalls and then we jumped, climbed, slid, and swam back down through them. 
On Thursday, we headed to the sourthern coast city of La Romana. Our friends were offered the use of a vacation house that belonged to some very wealthy people that they work for. It was at the resort Casa de Campo. This location happens to be where Beyonce threw Jay-Z's 40th birthday party (Since our mothers are the main readers of this blog, I should explain that Beyonce and Jay-Z are big-time recording artists - big-time celebrities). Numerous celebrities have stayed there. Basically, it was waaaaay out of our league...but awesome.We couldn't really afford to do a lot of the extra activities, but still had fun "living it up" and pretending we were rich by picking out "our" boat while walking down the Marina.
We even had a maid that made breakfast and lunch for us everyday and cleaned. (That was weird....we didn't really know how to handle that!) (But that's the culture there. I just wish I spoke better Spanish so that I could have communicated with her to let her know how great her food was or just be able to talk to her). 
The beach at the resort was much tamer. It was obvious that the guys were quite disappointed at the lack of waves. It was more of a "girl's" beach....PERFECT for laying out. Eventually, the guys found it necessary to invest in some flippers and snorkels. They used them in the ocean...and the resort pool. 
Overall, we experienced some wonderfully beautiful scenery. The D.R. is an economically poor nation, and that was obvious as we travelled through towns and saw the condition of homes. Hard to swallow why we have all that we do while others have so little. Quite humbling at times.Adam and I both agreed that this is probably one of the best vacations we've ever gone on. A great mix of activity and down time. You should only go on vacation with other people that you are certain that you'll get along with (unless they are actually family ;) ). The 4 of us enjoyed doing a lot of things together. Marv and Adam are like brothers from different mothers. They thoroughly entertained one another by making up games in the pool, playing Mario Kart (even after their wives went to bed), trash talking each other, and talking about whatever it is that guy's talk about. And Lindsay and I were more than happy to keep each other company as we sunned ourselves, read books, shopped, and talked about things that girls talk about.
And, now we are back to normal life. Glad to be back with our boys, but it was very nice to have a break and step away from the scheduled life of two little ones. 