Dorm decor

Annabelle and her roommate, Casey, have worked hard to get their dorm room set up to their liking. As promised, here are some pictures of the final result:

Never too old for a first day of school pic

Mike is what we are calling a "nondergraduate" student now. He's taking extra classes to beef up his application for the Army-Baylor physical therapy program, and today is the first day of Biomedical Physics:

Well, that was fast

Now that I'm a working girl, I no longer have unlimited days to spend however I wish. Accordingly, our trip to Rochester to return Annabelle for her sophomore year was a quick one: One day up, one day back.

She's very excited about living on the Music Interest Floor this year:



Photos of her room will have to come later, as we didn't stick around to help unpack and decorate.

A Rochester birthday

We went out last night to celebrate Annabelle's 19th (yikes!) birthday since we would be spending today driving her back up to school. Our friends that we are staying with, however, provided a lovely Lady Rochester cake for more celebrating tonight:



Happy birthday, Annabelle! Have a great sophomore year!

A dog and her lobster

Dominican Republic: Time to go home

One last shot of the resort on our way out:



We went our separate ways at the airport with Mike and Sarah heading back to Tallahassee and the rest of us going back to northern Virginia by way of Boston. Annabelle discovered that you are never too old for the Kidport at the Boston airport:

Dominican Republic: Monkey business

When we got back to the resort from our sailing trip this afternoon, there was a professional photographer taking pictures with a live monkey. I can't resist a monkey:

Dominican Republic: Boozin' and cruisin'

Sitting around on the beach has been great, but we did want to get away from the resort at least once on this trip. One thing we have enjoyed on our 2 trips to Jamaica has been a sailing/drinking trip, so we decided to try something similar here.

Group photo getting on board:



Enjoying the water with a young newlywed couple:



Having fun:





Seen from the bus back to the resort:



After a day out on the boat, it felt great to hit the shower and wash off all that sand and salt. We dressed up sweet for dinner and enjoyed taking some pictures around the resort:

Dominican Republic: Vitamin D overload

Our number one priority for this trip is to sit on the beach and enjoy refreshing beverages from the bar. In that respect, we are accomplishing a lot!







Our resort has a cool little water park at the hotel next door, so we wandered over there this afternoon. I was working on a bit of a sunburn, so I hunkered down in the shade while Fred and the kids played on the slides. Here are a couple photos I snapped with my phone that give you an idea of what all was there:

Dominican Republic: Getting away from it all

Greetings from the Royalton Punta Cana Resort in the Dominican Republic! We flew in yesterday, and, boy, are our arms tired. The resort is really nice, and I have to give two thumbs up to our travel agent Melissa Bostic (a.k.a., Get Away Girl) for doing such a great job of taking a lot of date restrictions, 2 originating airports, and a limited budget and finding something so perfect for us.

Here are a few random pictures of our temporary home away from home: