Visit Con Los Padres

My parents just left after a wonderful week-long visit.  They came last Saturday night, we left for a resort nearby in the morning, came back on Tuesday so the boys (and Owen) could attend a few days of school and so we could show them our lives here, and then went to the mountains for two days before they left.  The kids were so excited to see Grandma and Grandpa, and we all just felt it was so, so good to be together.

Abigail was mostly excited to see Grandma and Grandpa--but she was almost as excited about getting the princess dress and Hello, Kitty! purse that she knew Grandma was bringing.

Here's the Davis/Frey crew in Sosua.  You can't see her in the picture, but Abigail is in an adorable fish inner tube that a boy at the beach lent to her.

Here are the Davis boys outside of the national park in Cabarete.  We took Grandpa there for a birthday gift; it was hot we were all tired, and having a power-outage inside the cave made it a different (and more harrowing) experience than when we went the time before.  But it was truly a glimpse of the country!

The beach at Riu Bachata was amazing.

I mean, seriously, is this beautiful, or what?

Beach time with Grandma.

You'd never guess, but this was about the 18th attempt.

The chefs at the restaurant carved local auyamas (pumkins) into cool shapes.

The fam.

Local restaurant--do you know how hot it is cooking here?  Very.

Cathedral in downtown Santiago's Parque Duarte.

Souvenier bracelets from grandma.  A really sweet older woman in a shop gave us these after we bought some Larimar jewelry (a pretty blue stone from the D.R.).

My mom took these pictures of the market at the end of my street where I buy a lot of produce.  I don't exactly blend there or feel uber-confident (where I could start snapping photos myself), so it was great to be able to ask people if my mom could take pictures to show her friends about her daughter's life.  People were more than willing to be photographed.

Coconut stand.  You can get him to hack the top off for you and pour it into a cup or you can be more sanitary and self-reliant and almost dismember yourself in your very own kitchen after buying it whole.

OK, so here you can see chayote (the light green crisp squash), yuca--or patatas (sweet potatoes), it's hard to tell--behind it, platanos (big, green banana-looking fruits that need to be cooked) on the ground, and me, in the distance, buying tomatoes for less than 50 cents a pound.  (Don't worry, it all evens out.  Anything processed or made of plastic costs two to three times as much as in the states.

In the mountains of Jarabacoa: the butterfly house.  Butterflies on the sides of houses are big here.  The smaller ones (not pictured) are made of coconut shells.  I'm guessing the big metal ones are a result of people wishing coconuts were bigger.

El presidente, the local beer.

Tim, the collie who "shepherded" my family the whole time we were in the mountains.  He'd lay beside our table for a meal, supervise our swimming (he almost fell in trying to protect Jesse at one point), and guard our cabin at night (we kind of wished at that point he'd find another family to protect).  We LOVED Tim!

The waterfall we hiked down to after our horseback ride.

The kids with Grandma.  Kids who helped us on the horses were leaping off those cliffs behind them while we took these pictures.

We feel so blessed to have had such a wonderful visit.  And having those we love from America come to see our new life made it more real somehow here, too.  See you at Christmas, Grandma and Grandpa!