Punta Pics

Here are pics from our trip to Punta Cana.

Pedro, Sosa, and the McIntosh's

Well as most of you know we just went to the Dominican Republic. Heather's brother got married this past Thursday at the Breezes Punta Cana Resort. It was great to make the wedding and spend time with Heather's dad and brothers, but it wouldn't be our first choice for a vacation spot.

We left Oklahoma City Tuesday morning. We had a 6:20am flight so we got up and out pretty early... like I got up at 3:30 in the morning early. We had a short layover in Houston and then went on to Ft. Lauderdale. We found a Dave and Busters close to the hotel so that's where we went for dinner. We had never been to one and it was pretty neat. It's like a Celebration Station/Incredible Pizza kinda place on steroids. And it's not so geared towards kids. They have a full blown restaurant and bar with all kinds of things to eat. Then they have a giant area with all the games to play. The video games are crazy. Then like all those places they have tons of “earn tickets” games where you can redeem the tickets for crappy trinkets. We got Brooke a bunch of little goofy toys, but it turned out that she loved playing with them. We went back to the room and fell asleep watching the NBA finals, where Miami won the NBA Championship. When I got up in the morning there was a Miami Herald in front of our door. We saved the paper for Heather to put in her scrapbook. After a quick breakfast it was off to the Ft. Lauderdale airport for our trip to Punta Cana.

The experience was not so great at the airport. We flew Spirit Air, which from what we can tell takes all the people too rude to work at the major airlines and lets them be the face of their business. When we got to the ticketing area a Spirit agent told us to go “all the way to the end” for Punta Cana. So we did... then after standing in line for 10 minutes some other lady starts in with “this isn't the line for Punta Cana'. Some of the people in front of us made a stink about it “well that lady down there told us to come here”. The lady was completely rude... she just said “this isn't the line for Punta Cana... it's over here”. So my temper flared up. I just wanted her to acknowledge it was the other Spirit rep. That made the mistake telling us to get in that line... so I said “but you can see why we would all be in this wrong line” to which she replied “this is the line for Punta Cana” and pointed where she was standing... so again I said “but you see why we're all here right” after a couple of exchanges like this she was like “yeah”. All the while Heather was telling me to shut up and calm down for fear we'd get arrested. But we didn't...we stood in another line for like an hour and finally got checked in. The plane was late boarding and we got to Punta Cana I think about an hour late.

When we arrived at the airport in Punta Cana it was pretty wacky. Finding someone with 1^st grade level English skills was a major challenge. Also you have to buy some stupid visitor card for 10.00 a person... then you literally walk about 20 feet and turn it in to someone. So it cost us 30.00 for what I have no idea. I also found it interesting that the Dominican Republic doesn't care who comes and why. There was really not customs at all to go through. Heather stood and fought to get our bags and I watched Brooke. After we got our bags some guy ran up and grabbed them on his cart and we were off. That was it. No one asked us anything about why we were there or whatnot. It just seemed odd. The next challenge was finding the right bus to get us to the hotel. HOLY CRAP! We visiting about 4 different buses and each guy was like “Breezes.. no”. We were kinda freaking out. Finally we got on one and a VIP Tour rep (the Tour company the thing was all booked through) assured us the bus was going to Breezes. The driver was nuts. They drives pretty crazy over there. Motorcycles and mopeds are really big and all the guys with vans, trucks, buses, etc. just honky at them and get within about 6 inches of hitting them when they pass. If I ever live there I don't plan on riding a motorcycle. We made it to the resort after about 30 minutes.

Checking in was a mess. Luckily Heather's dad saw us so he could show us the ropes. He had already been there for a few days. We got our room then had to come back in 10 minutes to get our keys. It was weird. We were starving so Rick showed us where we could grab some grilled chicken. It was really good. We had a quick bite and made it up to our room. The rooms were okay. Nothing super fancy, but they were clean and big enough. Heather thought the bed was uncomfortable but it didn't bother me. It was really cloudy and thundering when we arrived so we just left on our shorts/shirts and took Brooke down to the beach. I took her close enough to get her feet wet in the ocean. She seemed to think it was pretty neat. After we played for a bit we got cleaned up and went and had dinner. It was buffet style because we didn't have reservations at any of the restaurants. It wasn't bad.

Thursday we met Rick and Heather's brother Issac for breakfast. Then it was off to the pool and the beach. Brooke didn't want to play by the water at the beach. The waves were too scary for her. So we just played in the sand. She had a lot of fun. Heather, Rick, Issac and Issac's fiance Natalie took kayaks out into the ocean. I needed a zoom lens. Oh well. We had lunch at a place by the pool and then everyone went to cleanup and get ready for the wedding.

The wedding was nice. It was cloudy so not crazy hot. After the wedding we went to the beach to do pictures. Then we changed into shorts for the dinner/reception. It was nice... good food and got to visit with everyone.

Friday we had a few hours to play around at the pool before we caught our bus back to the airport. We arrived back in Ft. Lauderdale Friday late afternoon. We stood in a bunch of lines for customs things. We didn't get checked much so it wasn't a big deal just a pain with all our luggage and a 2 year old in a stroller. We had dinner in the hotel.

Saturday we had the Embassy Suites breakfast which is always nice. Then we had 4 or 5 hours to kill. Heather was feeling sick to her stomach so we took it easy and just walked around by our hotel. There is a river area 4 blocks from the hotel so we went and hung out there for a bit. Then it was back to the airport again. We got on an early flight to Houston than originally scheduled because a flight was delayed. Turns out the one we were on that departed about 5:30 was supposed to leave at 9:00am that morning. OY! Those poor people. Anyway we had a long layover in Houston and finally made it back to Oklahoma City around 11:00ish. We were in bed by about 12:30.

Overall it was okay. I think with having to deal with lines/airports everyday but 1 on the entire vacation made it a little annoying. The resort was too crowded. Lines and reservations for everything which isn't great when you're wanting to just chill on a vacation. Lots and lots of bottled water. I had a Dominican beer... Presidente. It wasn't bad... tasted just like your average beer. I didn't get much sun because we just weren't out much and it was cloudy quite a bit of the time.

Pictures coming soon . . .

One of the cooler shows on Earth

So Brooke and I went to the circus yesterday afternoon. We had great seats. We were dead center, probably 10 rows up. When we sat down I saw a guy caddy-corner in front of me shooting some pics with a pretty nice looking rig. Turns out it was KJ from work. He was there with his family. That was cool durning the intermission I had someone to talk to.

The circus was pretty neat. It's basically the same concept as the last time I went when I was a kid, but just bigger, louder, etc. Brooke seemed to like the elephant tricks and the tigers. I think it was a little long for her, plus it was late in the afternoon so she seemed to get a little tired as it went on, but overall she had a good time. She picked out a circus bear stuffed animal for her present from the circus. I wanted to get her a t-shirt too, but they didn't have any kid sizes!?!. I said to the guy "good luck selling all these to adults". That makes no sense.

We walked through the old Myriad Center (now the Cox Convention Center) to get to the Ford Center. When we were walking through we happened to time it perfect and Brooke got to see them walking the elephants out of that building towards the Ford Center. That was pretty neat.

It was a good time.

Two Screens, tons o' fun!.. and some clowns

So if you haven't been keeping up with handheld gaming news, the new Nintendo DS Lite comes out this Sunday. But if you have been keeping up with handheld gaming news, then you know that last week several large retail chains across the country screwed up and started selling them early. Sooo... we got a tip from a realiable source at work that a Target nearby was selling them. Heather took off the next morning and managed to get one!

They are way different than the other gameboy models you might have played. Not just the two screens and the touch screen and the microphone... but the wireless connectivity is pretty amazing. There are about 4 of us (soon to be more) at work that have DS's. So everyday we've been eating real quick and the playing games against each other for the rest of the lunch period. It's a blast.

Then tonight I decided to try the WiFi. If you have a wireless high speed internect access point you can play online against anyone from around the world. Fortunatly I have some cool neighbors with wirelss networks so I was able to try it out! Thanks guys. Anyway, very cool and takes handheld gaming to a new level that's pretty sweet.

Heather likes it too. And we got Brooke a Nintendogs game that she thinks is really neat. She can say "Daisy" (what we named our dog in the game) into the microphone and the puppy will come running to the front of the screen. You can use the touch screen to "pet" and interact with the dog. She giggles all the time when we're playing it.

Also going to the Ringling Bros circus tomorrow. Heather wasn't too interested so it'll just be me and Brooke. I haven't been to one since I was a kid so I think it'll be fun.

It's pretty much my favorite animal

Apparently Napoleon (click here for awesome video clip) wasn't just making stuff up when he drew his favorite animal the liger. They look pretty cool, maybe we'll get one for Christmas.