Our Dominican Trip, In Photos

I wrote a post two years ago about our trip to the Dominican that was full of ethereal tropical stereotypes and musings about how rewarding it was taking Essley (then 11 months) along for the first time on this annual trip we do for a festival headlined by the band Robbie stage manages. This, my friends, is not that kind of post. I won't repeat my "complaints" about why this year was such a different experience (you can read them here, in case you missed last week's post where I mentioned it), because in reality it was still absolutely wonderful. I mean it would have to take either a lot of really bad crap to happen or a truly terrible attitude about life in general for a person not to enjoy themselves in blissfully sunny weather at a fancy all-inclusive resort. I had an incredible time. I'm a beach person by nature so I was in my element, I got to spend 6 days with some of my best friends and their babies, and my kids had the time of their lives. But it was also hard, especially when my husband was working, to wrangle a fiercely (and often frustratingly) independent almost 3 year old and an antsy 11 month old through a large resort full of dangerous distractions. (Again, I went more into that here if you're in the mood for completely unnecessary bitching.) Most of our friends brought helpers and nannies, which was really smart for this particular trip (we were at a music festival, after all). And I learned a lot about how I'd do things differently. In the end, I'd say it was 85% awesomeness, 15% difficulties, and I'm profoundly grateful that we were able to go at all. I've been daydreaming about the sunshine ever since.

I did not bring my camera, because I wanted us to be present in our experience and not feel pressured to document it. But I did take a whole bunch of spontaneous, low quality and non-cohesive but in-the-moment pictures with my cell phone (which are shown here along with a handful taken by the professionals, like the two directly below by my old pal Dave Vann). I think they tell the story of our trip better than my words could, so I'm sharing them in all their glory today.

As you can see, the resort and grounds were stunning. And the company was pretty great too. I'm not sure where the festival will be next year, but if it's in the Dominican, we'll definitely be back. I'd really like to rent a place for a few days before or after so we can experience more of the country outside of the confines of resort life. It really is an incredibly beautiful country and the people that we've met were just wonderful.

Thank you for letting me share some pieces of our trip with you! Have any of you spent time in the DR?

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