July and sport changes

 

Bagel caught a bird- he was in heaven! It was actually more that the bird was a baby and couldn’t fly yet. He was trying his best to play, but the bird didn’t know how. 

Chad turns 51! Here we are celebrating his birthday together!

Graham has a party in his clubhouse. He has redesigned the top floor so now it is open and made the perfect place for this late night party.

I guess it rained during the night, so they put the roof on the top.

I am now in Young Women’s! I spent a few hours this month meeting my 14 girls in Class One. They are amazing! I am going to really enjoy this calling.

Here are a group of my girls at the Draper Temple. What a neat way to start our day.

Kate is finally enjoying being home and hanging out with friends! After the DR she went to FSY, so she is happy after 4 weeks of traveling to be home. She also got her wisdom teeth out this month. She is finally feeling better, a week later. She was so swollen! We are all glad she is back to her usual self.

The one thing we aren’t doing is tryouts this week. No soccer tryouts for Kate. No football tryouts for Graham. It is the end of an era!! They are both thinking of playing lacrosse this fall, so at least that might happen. What an adventure!

Dominican Republic Trip!

 We landed in the DR and immediately got wheels. To the excitement of the kids - we got this van to drive around in. Super fun! Little did we know how tight parking and driving was going to be, but we had the space to each have our own row!

Our first Airbnb had an infinity pool in the DR mountainous jungle of Jarabarcoa. What a neat place to stay, and we loved our adventures there!

The next day we went rafting, and these were quite the rapids and waterfalls! We had a blast navigating the river with our guides.

Canyoning was another fun adventure in Jarabarcoa!

This is a cute street in downtown Jarabarcoa that we had dinner near several nights. 

Here is the view from our local restaurant near our Airbnb. The view was amazing from here!

This is 24 waterfalls, what an amazing place! 

The goal here was to jump and slide off of as many waterfalls as possible. Here is one of the slides. Pretty amazing!

Then off to the city - Santo Domingo. Can you believe this was taken right downtown at a little grotto area under the city? So pretty!

The original fort in Santo Domingo! Audrey is looking out of a guard tower. This is the place that Christopher Columbus first landed, and we really enjoyed the history here!

Scootering around Santo Domingo

The Chocolate tour - we made our own chocolate, yum! No milk chocolate here...

Inside the Columbus memorial.

Having lunch and playing games with some Dominican natives. This was a really fun day. We hung out with some relatives of the woman that got baptized in Danbury when Audrey was there.

We arrive in Punta Cana, first meal was on the beach.

The view from our porch the next day.

Punta Cana was beach days everyday, surfing, fishing, inflatable obstacle course, bodyboarding, etc. Very fun!

Graham catches a fish!

Parasailing at our beach

We had a great time. We had the experience of no wifi, a night without electricity and running water. How crazy for us. We also experienced rush hour in Bavaro downtown - crazy! I was glad to be on our way home when the day came.

One last obstacle, we got a flat tire on the way to the airport. We had help and got it fixed and made it on our flights home. How exciting. So glad to be home safe!