Punta Cana 2019

This year over the April break, we headed back to Punta Cana where we first visited in 2017. I had high hopes of us taking a more adventurous vacation this year to a new place but couldn’t get my act together this fall to do the proper planning and booking before prices all skyrocketed. When Mike and I finally sat down to figure out a plan, it was well into January and we ultimately decided that we would make life easy and go back to a place that was loads of fun two years ago and would require very little in the way of planning or preparing.

This was never how we vacationed before kids and honestly, neither of us ever envisioned that we would become “all inclusive” kinds of travelers. This is especially true for my husband who isn’t nearly the beach fanatic that I am, so trips focused almost exclusively on beaches and pools were never what he pictured. But the truth is, after we took our first resort vacation to Mexico in 2016, (https://www.aptubinisphotography.com/mexico/)  we had a whole new appreciation for the ease of a trip where your only decisions are things like beach or pool? Margarita or pina colada? As people always say, there is really no such thing as a “vacation” with kids. You take trips with kids but they require feeding and some entertaining and just a general level of management that cuts into one’s ability to ever 100% kick back in the same way that you do before kids. Still, these recent trips that we’ve taken have come pretty darned close to feeling like a REAL vacation, even with two relatively young kids in tow. With no responsibilities whatsoever and picture perfect weather for a week, we all kicked back and enjoyed lots of swimming, feasting on lots of Dominican food and just being together with no one distracted by work, homework or any other obligations. Next year, we’ve got plans for some new destinations and a slightly more active trip but for 2019, this was just right.