We’re in the Dominican Republic! I didn’t get to go back to Mexico, but we surprised my family on a trip for my cousin’s 40^th birthday and are in the DR for 8 days!

Let me break it down for ya!

I was texting with my cousin Eric’s wife, Ashley. Eric is an airplane mechanic in the Canadian Air Force and they are currently stationed (with their two kids!) in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Ashley mentioned that they were planning a tropical vacation to celebrate Eric’s 40^th birthday the following March.

I, of course, wanted to go right away! Ashley told me that they wanted to go somewhere that wasn’t Mexico, on the Caribbean Ocean. Sign me up! I had never been to that side of our continent! But, seeing that I was still on maternity leave and was not planning on returning to my desk job, I didn’t think we were going to make the trip happen.

Ashley and Eric and some of my other family members that live in Prince George all paid deposits for their trips in May of 2018. Brad and I were sadly unable to commit.

I was looking every few weeks to see if we could make the trip work.

When Brad and I went to Mexico with the kids last year, we decided that we wouldn’t travel with them without booking a suite, where we could have a separate bedroom for the baby to sleep.

The main set back? It is significantly more expensive to travel this way.

Which made it even more unlikely that we would be able to go to the Dominican for Eric’s birthday.

I checked over the holidays, too, thinking there would be some sort of deal. But the trip was just too much money.

Thanks to a random ad (somewhere on a social media outlet, I’m sure), I learned that booking international travel two months before your trip was the most cost-saving time to book.

I also learned that there were some great travel deals at the moment!

It didn’t take me long to look up the cost of the trip for Eric’s birthday…and I was surprised to see that the trip we wanted to take, flying through Toronto on the way there and Montreal on the way back, was over $2,000 cheaper than it had been only a few weeks before.

NO WAY!!!

I told Brad what I had found…we pretended to think it over while Brad submitted his vacation days with work and we booked our trip!!

I looked over at Brad and asked him whether we should tell my family that we were going. His response?

Nah.

After attending the Whitecaps season opener (not to be missed!), we headed out to the airport and boarded a red eye to Toronto. Our first flight was delayed for almost two hours, but we were already at the airport, and we had a long layover in Toronto, so it didn't really matter. The kids slept quite well on that flight, after Maverick freaked out for about half an hour, but it was less stress from them than anticipated, even if Brad and I only slept for an hour between the two of us!

We managed to surprise my mom when we got to the resort. We were only about 45 minutes behind them the whole trip, but we were on separate airlines so we weren't able to go say hi until we arrive in Punta Cana.

I saw where my family was sitting as we waited to check in, so I sent Archer ahead to surprise his Baka and it all went off without a hitch!

We've all had too much sun and too many drinks...so all in all, it's been a great trip so far!

I'll be at the beach if you need me,

Anya