A Few Days In…

It is Thursday night.  Everyone is falling asleep (even though it is 7:10 back at home, and because Puerto Rico does not suffer through the random changing of time, in a few days it would 6:10 back at home, it is kind of odd).

We are having fun, well fun minus the long second leg of our plane ride.  It was  so long!  We were so tired.  On our time schedule, we left home at 10:05 pm, arrived in Philadelphia at 3:00 am, waited and left at 6:00 am arriving in Puerto Rico at 10:30 am.  Ivy slept all but about an hour, while Owen spent the flight throwing up in a bag.  Poor Owen.  I either heard him yelling for Greg to get the bag or heard him asking Greg to tighten his seat belt cause he wasn't safe.  Oh how I wish I could keep my anxiety troubles to myself.  We tried giving him a drink of water to which he replied, "they probably have gooder water in Puerto Rico, I will just wait and have some there."  (I wish it weren’t true, but he was totally right, it wasn't good water at all, other troubles I would rather keep to myself).   Little Ivy would wear nothing but a diaper and cried at the mere mention of getting her dressed.  Ok then, diaper and nice baby it is! 

We arrived and made our way to collect the bags.  Owen’s bad day continued when Ben picked up a bag and smacked Owen in the face.   It was a sad start to things.  We made our way outside and a few feet away from the door, the hot humid air was felt by all as we cruised outside in our shoes, socks, sweatshirts and long pants.  It didn’t take long to lose some of those clothes.  We found the taxi service, hopped in our three giant vans and began our final commute to our destination. 

After reaching the hotel, we were thrilled!  It is a beautiful resort on the beach.  We are here on the offseason, which has resulted in a private beach and private pool.  We checked in, explored the beach, the pool, the hotel, our rooms, and let the kids run wild.

Most of us were in bed and asleep by 8:00 that night, asleep to sounds of birds and frogs and warmth and humidity. 

We spent Wednesday hanging out, swimming, playing in the ocean, arranging for a taxi to take all 19 of us to the store and to dinner, and planning our remaining days. 

We spent Thursday arranging for a rental car to take all 19 of us to the rain forest, going to the rain forest, driving back to the store, attending a timeshare meeting (don't ask), playing with cousins, and planning our remaining days again. 

To summarize:

Lowlights from the trip so far:

1. Ben running backwards to catch a football and crashing into a bench and spraining his ankle.

2. The timeshare presentation that Angie/Steve and Greg/I went to today to get a free $120.00 massage.  (I have no idea why we did this, the word free starts to sound even better after a $16.00 breakfast I suppose.  We made it clear that we were not buying a timeshare, that we just wanted the free stuff, to which the representative responded by saying, "well no one wants to buy a timeshare, they just do".  How awesomely true is that.)

3. The smell of the bug spray Greg made us all wear in the rain forest. It is now a heavily debated issue as to whether there were bugs at all or whether we repelled them.

The highlights of our two days so far:

1. Iguanas roaming everywhere. 

2. Dad swimming in what he claimed was the first time since 4th grade. 

3. Watching Ivy put sand in her hair. 

4.  Laughing my head off as we planned for 3 hours how to get around and what to do the next day and figured out at the end that we didn't figure out anything.  (it is terribly expensive to get around or at least get us around, it was $100 to pick us up, take us 5 miles and drop us off and pick us up again and bring us back, a lot of planning is needed to figure out how to get anywhere without spending all of our money).

5. Having Greg drive the rental 14 passenger van (and yes, they really can fit 19 people).

6. Loving that Owen slept soundly for 13 hours after the first night and woke up to say "WHOA, the nights in Puerto Rico are so short!"

7. Driving up to the restaurant last night and wondering if the taxi driver was taking us to be killed.  Everyone was chatting up a storm and saw the restaurant, it was then a hush fell over the crowd.  The final verdict: best steak many in the party had ever had.  It wasn't so scary after all.

8. The frog that Kristi found on her shirt during dinner.

9. Watching Ivy go down the slide a million times.

10. Lifejacket boy wearing his life jacket on the beach and refusing to go into the ocean. 

11. Going grocery shopping to avoid a breakfast repeat of 2 pieces of toast with honey and half a grapefruit for $16.00. (by the end of this trip we will finally have figured out how to save some money).

12. Watching Owen and Alysa as they snuggled together on the bed watching a movie with Alysa's arm around Owen.

13. Teasing Greg about his rainforest planning.  He was convinced by the ever loyal Internet that we get to  the visitor's center and walk to waterfall.  Come to find out it doesn't work quite like that.  No one could bite their tongue as we drove up the winding road and constantly reminded Greg that we could be walking this road with all 19 of us, knocking on death’s door the whole time.  We couldn't resist, but we still like Greg - see #5 about driving the 14 -19 passenger van. 

14. Driving around looking for waterfalls but seeing a snack shop with burgers and hearing cheers from the van louder than when we found the waterfalls.  The snack shop is more our style.

15. Bringing Eric and Greg with us to help us order our Subway sandwiches in Spanish.

16. Happy kids.

 

And that is why we are LOVING Puerto Rico.