A Caribbean Christmas

After our Croatia trip with the boys in 2018, I told Kelvin that I was taking off 2019 from international travel if it included children. While he and I managed to have a few-day Southwest getaway in August which really felt like a break, I am very anxious amidst traveling with kids and not that keen to do so (due to the logistics of getting from point A to point B while herding/redirecting roaming toddlers, the lack of steady routines, including inadequate sleep times and jetlag [and resulting kids' breakdowns or poor behavior], and the need to be well-prepared in terms of packing and having sufficient on-demand food/snacks, in particular).  Adult-only traveling feels like a breeze in comparison, as trips with young kids up feeling far more exhausting than they are enjoyable (I'm constantly wondering if the destination(s) make the [pain of the] journey(s) worth it...)

Nevertheless, earlier in the year, Kelvin floated the idea of going to an all-inclusive resort in the warm Caribbean for Christmas (when the kids' childcare center is closed), including my parents in the "vacation" trip so the kids could spend some quality time with their farther-away grandparents. When he was met with resistance on my part, he swore that he'd make all the arrangements (without the need for day-to-day itinerary planning or coordination, which is usually my "job") and that we'd stay in one place for the duration of the getaway. Thought reluctant, I (generally always up for visiting more countries) ultimately agreed. If you read my last blog post, you probably know that I was, at that time, regretting my accession to the deal (and this didn't even detail the pre-trip [i.e. the week before] "travel advisory" of which we became aware that the resort was closed during our anticipated travel dates due to renovations [which didn't end up being the case]). Nevertheless, it ended up being a pretty nice (and even relaxing, at times) trip, as you can see from the many photos I'll post below (although be wary of all the smiles, as there were lots of tears and plenty of whining that is not captured by camera).

On Christmas Eve morning, we flew from Dulles to Punta Cana (a beachside town on the eastern side of the Dominican Republic, which is part of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, which includes Haiti to the west) on an early morning flight, and the three and a half hours passed fairly uneventfully. Niall napped a bit and the kids were both very well behaved. We were met at the airport by a van which took us straight to our resort, the Now Larimar. Kelvin checked in to our family suite while I tried to keep the kids out of the lobby fountain (fairly unsuccessfully, and with one head injury-- Niall, running away from me, banged his head on a lobby chair, getting a nice bump and a small laceration) while trying to "enjoy" the welcome drink.  After the check-in, though, it was fairly smooth sailing for the rest of the trip.

We spent the next three days enjoying the warm (~80-degree) weather and sun (my Dad, for one, appreciated getting out of winter in VA), the resort's three pools, direct beach access, unlimited and delicious food and drinks (while the kids were free, they definitely ate their money's worth and had never seen so many choices of food and desserts!!), and Christmas-themed events, including stellar buffets, live entertainment (and lots of techno versions of Christmas carols on the stereo system), Santa hat-wearing staff, and a living Nativity.  We had a double-room suite, allowing for naps and separate sleeping spaces, and Niall slept extremely well in their provided crib, while Iver insisted on co-sleeping with a parent in the other room (not our favorite thing to do, as the involved parent doesn't really sleep well). Niall also has shown a lot of potty-training readiness, pooping on the potty most of the trip, so we only had a couple of messy diaper changes throughout which made things easier/far more pleasant.  While we unfortunately didn't get to see more of the country (country #61 for me, #5 for Iver, and #2 for Niall) than the Punta Cana area, we did get glimpses of the culture and the warmth of the Dominican people, and definitely had some good R&R with poolside reading time for me  (I finished a good sweeping novel Pachinko by Min Jin Lee on my kindle) and quality grandparent time.

  Happy to be in the tropics

Pool time fun

 

 

"pretending" to nap, poolside

One of the pools had a large chess set and my Dad was keen on teaching Iver (the board game lover) how to play (I think he's got the basics down). 

Uno in the lobby bar

Christmas Smiles

("Will Santa know we're in the Dominican Republic?" asked Iver).

Santa Delivered! 

The boys enjoyed riding the shuttle between our "Garden View"  rooms and the main hotel lobby (and playing in another vehicle).

They frolicked in the sand and chased waves at the beach.

(it was rare to get all parties in the photo to smile simultaneously!)

Kelvin and Iver were going to go parasailing, but Iver backed out last minute, so Kelvin rode alone.

You can't tell how tall he looked as he bent over for the photo, but here is a "Tall guy" (on stilts) we saw at a Christmas celebration on the beach ("I thought the 'Tall guy' [of the North Coast festivals] lived on the Arcata Plaza," remarked Iver).

Some evenings after dinner, we "relaxed" on the terrace with live music...

 

 ... which included trying to keep Niall away from open flames.

 Dancing

Our "smiley Nially" really has his photo "CHEESE!" down!

On our last full day in Punta Cana, we booked an excursion to the Dolphin Explorer park, where we got to get up and close with dolphins (neither of the kids wanted anything to do with the mammals when we were in the water, unfortunately) and a stingray, and also feed some tropical birds and watch some sea lions in action.  Unfortunately, the park forbade close-up photo-taking of the dolphin encounter (us kissing, petting, and dancing with the friendly creatures) so that you'd be forced to buy their overpriced photo bundle package, so we only have a few snaps from this part of our trip (and a couple digital photos-of-photos for this blog of the couple we did purchase).

Vested up!

In the water (kids notably apprehensive of the ray... you should have seen the tears when we were up close to the dolphins!)

 

(Dad took this banned photo)

Saltatory dolphin

Feeding the birds

Sea lion show

  Fishy smooch like the one we got

Dad, Kelvin, and I all got (fishy) smooched on the cheek by a sea lion. The boys didn't want anything to do with that-- here they are recreating the scene with humans only allowed.

 

I definitely understand the appeal of resorts for vacationers (especially when you have young kids). To not have to worry about finding your way around everywhere or acquiring food and drink takes a lot of the stress out of travel. While I feel and felt somewhat unsettled at these types of places (I think it's some combination of discomfort from being "waited on," which seems very elitist/classist, as well as feeling as though I'm wasting resources [I cringed every time I had to crack open a plastic water bottle, as the tap water in DR is not potable, and hesitated when I saw the enormous spread at the buffet, knowing that so many people in the world have so little food].  Nevertheless, until I can, without undue stress, take kids on trips of my preferred style (exploring culture, history, and nature), it may be more stay-in-one-place travel (or no travel) for us in the near future...

...but, knowing Kelvin (and me), this will probably not be the case. Anyway-- Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas 2019!

"It could always be worse"-- finding the silver lining in a messy travel day

We had quite the rough travel day on Sunday.  Travel, with hiccups, delays, etc. is so stressful with little kids (especially those who are very routine-focused). I am reminded why I told Kelvin this year that I didn't want to do any elective travel with kiddos (however, he was able to talk me into a warm Christmas resort destination and another country in the Dominican Republic with my parents).

We were scheduled for an evening flight leaving Arcata around 8 p.m. to connect to a red-eye out of San Francisco at 11 p.m. to head to my parents' place in Virginia for the holidays (with our next-day international flight to follow).  Kelvin is very savvy with the United Airlines app and was able to track where our departing plane was going to originate, and realized around 2 p.m. that it was likely to be about two hours late. We had a relatively short (hour-and-a-half) connection in SFO and had to make a quick decision as to what we thought it best to do while it was still early. 

This was one of those times when it really sucks to live in such a rural area, five hours from the closest major airport.  There weren't any local car-rental places open at that time on a Sunday. We thought the worst case scenario was that we'd miss our local flight, then miss our SF-DC flight, and not be able to be re-booked on a standby flight due to holiday demand.  We were sure that our checked bags would not make it to DC (but had thankfully put our warm-weather holiday stuff in our carry-ons just in case). We decided to drive our own car to economy parking and hope for the best.  This is how the car ride went:

3:45 p.m: We get our bags in the car and set off southbound. Kids do pretty well, listening to the Frozen II soundtrack and then Annie (Niall's favorite; he even sings along!!). They did fight a little bit over playing with a new water doodle board from Auntie Theresa.

5:15: The whining starts. Niall is getting bored in the carseat, wanting to be "all done, please!". Iver also is frustrated we're not "there yet," asking every two minutes how much longer the trip will be. We can entertain Iver a bit with stories about our sky-diving and math problems. We start driving through the curvier parts of the redwoods on the 101.

5:30:  I move to the back seat to entertain the boys from closer in proximity. I think I should get some food out to kill some time and it's technically their dinnertime. Niall is screaming for food. Iver refuses food (which is odd) and looks a bit green. I happened to (great luck!) be holding a cloth tote "snack bag" of food.

5:35: Iver says "I need a bag," and starts puking (by some actual miracle I had JUST moved to the seat next to him, and I catch the puke in the cloth tote bag, but it starts leaking onto his pants and sock). He continued to throw up several more times (he tells me it was at least five), and this time I had some wipes and some plastic diaper bags ready.

5:40-6:30: Niall is still screaming for "pizza" which was the last-minute portable food item I had to pack. I don't think it's such a good idea to feed him with the puker on my left and more curvy roads ahead. Iver asks when we'll be at Ukiah, where we told him we could stop for a pee break and a change of clothes.

6:35: both boys fall asleep in their carseats, and I start sobbing in the miracle of silence. We get a text message about checking in for our 8:15 flight (at this time, they had not disclosed the time of delay). I ask Kelvin how we can spare ourselves this pain in the future and swear I am never traveling with small kids ever again.

7:45: we stop for gas outside Santa Rosa. Iver wakes up and we change his clothes, clean up the car (the damage wasn't too bad given the bag-catch) and use the facilities. Niall thankfully stays asleep with white noise on.

8:30: Niall wakes up and wants to eat more pizza. Eating the remaining slices entertains him for the remaining 30-minute drive to the off-site airport parking.

9:15: we board the shuttle to the airport terminal. We see hordes of people trying to check in and check bags.

9:40: Kelvin (who had already printed our boarding passes) tries to check our bags, but was unable to do so at the kiosks. We spent about 40 minutes with an agent, who was ultimately able to get our bags checked to Washington.  He couldn't however, confirm our seats, and said we'd have to check in with our gate agent. (The flight leaving Arcata apparently departs). I realize that I have lost my neck pillow, probably on the shuttle bus.

10:20 p.m.: We get through security (Thank God for pre-TSA) and make it to the gate. A very kind and helpful gate agent spent about 40 minutes getting our seats re-assigned (apparently since we didn't get on the first leg of our trip, our seats were given away) and grouped together.  We do a diaper change for Niall and get the kids fed some snacks (Iver is back to baseline at this point and very thirsty).

11:00 p.m.: Our flight doesn't leave on time and is at least 40 minutes delayed.

00:45: (almost 2 hours behind schedule) Our 4.25-hour flight finally leaves SFO, and goes relatively smoothly-- Iver slept almost the whole way, and Niall cried for about 15 minutes before nursing and falling asleep on my lap (he was still a lap-child, being under 2), although he did a lot of squirming and rolling around (and more nursing) in his sleep. I think (due to our seats being reassigned), we somehow were upgraded to Economy Plus seating, which had a bonus of extra leg room. I tried to doze but without much ability to recline or rest my neck, didn't sleep well at all.  Niall woke up just before landing in a fairly good mood despite his sleep not seeming particularly restful.  Our bags made it to the carousel, my Dad picked us up, and we were home to McLean for breakfast.

Whew. When Kelvin and I had the silent car time, we were contemplating just how horrible that whole experience was. I was sobbing and felt like we had to figure out how to learn from it. Five hours in a car with kids is definitely worse than five hours on an airplane, in case it was previously up for debate. Our poor kids hated the long, time-sensitive drive with a deadline. I was sitting there chanting in my head "this is shorter than labor. I can do anything for a few painful hours" but praying for things to get better.

We learned that Iver gets really carsick the back of an SUV, and from now, we will always do car-travel with puke bags and/or buckets (or maybe dramamine on board). We will have wipes ready in the back seat.  We will try to avoid this drive with him whenever we possibly can.

We learned that trying to do three-dimensional chess to guess (in advance) whether your outgoing flight will be delayed adds a whole lot of stress to our (very planning-focused) trips, and in the future we may just roll the dice (fly out of our home airport which is what we paid for) and risk missing a connecting flight. (We will probably not schedule another departure the day of or day after our arrival so that we don't feel so much added pressure). In the end, even departing Arcata the 1.5 hours late, we would have made our connecting flight in SF and so the five-hour drive (and the fact that one of us will have to drive that leg home alone) was probably unnecessary and brought on considerable extra stress on all of the members of our family (and is hard to swallow. But we're trying to put it all behind us, and let any bad decisions we made go...).

We learned that if you miss the first leg of your journey without taking time out of your already stress-filled day to specifically tell the airline, they appear to cancel all your legs and give away your seats, even though you have boarding passes with assigned seats.

However, despite how rough the trip was, everything could have been far worse (can't it always be worse, even though in the moment, it seems the absolute worst?).
The vomit could have gone all over Iver, his carseat, me, AND the floor (like it did on a previous road trip), requiring considerable more clean-up (requiring time we just did not have on that day).  I luckily had moved to be with him literally moments before the vomiting started and he was able to articulate how he was feeling.
We could have had two vomiting children instead of just one child.
We could have had three or four, and not just over one hour, of backseat screaming (it was a miracle, actually, that both kids slept for close to two hours of the car ride).
We could have gotten a flat tire or had another car-related travel delay and still missed our flight.
Despite our efforts, we could have still not gotten seats on a flight to DC.
Our flight to DC could have been delayed further or cancelled altogether due to winter weather and other circumstances out of our control.
Our kids could have been awake (or cranky, screaming, and bored) for the duration of our across-the-country flight.

We are so lucky in that the financial resources it took to take on the charges for gas and parking for our impromptu road trip aren't going to break our budget.
Our kids behaved very well including following directions in the airport and Niall especially was extremely pleasant for a one-year-old with the exception of the just-over-one-hour car tantrum. They both are taking extended naps today at my parents' house.

(picture of fairly happy snacking traveler at SFO)

IAD, decked out for the holidays

I'm trying to be positive.  We have a healthy family.  We are with family.  We are privileged to have the means to travel.  We are going to have a good Christmas.