We had a great time on our spring break trip to the Dominican Republic with our friends the Heravi's back in March. They have 3 kids ages 7, 5 and 2 so it was a full house of little rascals running wild. We stayed at a gorgeous home with a view of the ocean and our own pool so the kids spent every day, all day swimming in the sun. Hank made some good progress on the swimming front and even treaded water for a few seconds by himself. Seeing the older kids running and jumping in the pool definitely helped motivate him. Gus is a water baby probably won't need much to get him swimming independently in short order. Lillia Heravi celebrated her 5th birthday while we were there and we all went to swim with the dolphins as her birthday party. Gus and daddy had a good time. Hank was not so into it and I have some moral issues with dolphins in captivity thanks to my animal planet days (see The Cove, it will ruin dolphin shows for you forever and have you thinking about bringing wire cutters with you to the aquarium, trust me), so we observed the dolphin petting from the dock. Fine by us. Other highlights included massages for mom and dad, swimming in natural lagoons and playing on the beach. Heaven.
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| Our view. Le sigh. |
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| Gus liked the view too - so much so he forgot to put his pants on! |
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| Here is Master Gus in his resort wear. He calls this his Cuban Barber look. |
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| Hank and Daddy in the natural lagoon. |
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| Happy kids in the sand... |
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| Gus at the beach... |
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| Chilling at the pool |
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| The whole crew... |
It was a week of amazing weather (yet not a tan line on either Kelly child - they are the whitest boys ever), lots of fun adventures and catching up with old friends. It was just what we needed after the longest winter in the history of the world.
We returned to a city in full bloom. The spring is the best time of year in DC, with an amazing variety of trees blooming in a rainbow of pastels. I have never been a big nature person but I have to say I'm like a kid in a candy store when the trees come out here. I'm driving around going, "oooh! look at that dogwood! wow! gorgeous cherry blossoms!" Our saucer magnolia was glorious as usual. Unfortunately we had a brief spell of nasty weather again last week with lots of wind, rain and near freezing temperatures (including a bit of snow) that took most of the blossoms down on the earlier side :(
We headed to Rosemary Beach (near Panama City) for Easter in the hopes for some warmer weather but alas it evaded us. The temps hovered around 58 degrees the whole time we were there. It was warmer in DC!! We had a good time nonetheless with plenty of family bike riding (Hank has graduated to a big boy bike with training wheels!), pool time (dad got in the pool, mom sat under a pile of towels), and some beach time.
The highlight of the weekend was Easter Sunday. The kids woke up to a house that had been visited by the Easter bunny - a first for us. Hank is finally old enough to get the concept, sort of. He came upon his first chocolate egg and excitedly asked "can I eat it?!" and then was so focused on doing that he didn't notice the dozens of other eggs hidden in plain view. It took quite a while for them all to be collected. But that's not all - we joined the stream of other families heading over to the neighborhood park to partake in the BIG egg hunt. The town had put out 10,000 eggs for the kids to hunt in a mad dash. The excitement/anxiety level was high before the kids were let loose and then chaos reigned. Gus quickly got down to business picking up eggs and placing them in other kids' baskets. Hank, the purist that he is, insisted on picking up only green eggs "because green is my favorite color."
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| Stress before the start of the hunt... |
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| The field of eggs... |
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| Collecting collecting |
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| His "basket" - we improvised with a bike helmet - filled to the brim |
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| The green egg dance |
It was a nice family weekend with a good balance of quality kid time and some nice date nights thrown in for Maman and Daddy. We feel so lucky to have such great little boys to hang out with - they just keep getting better every day.
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| Bros on the beach |
