Ballerina, Fair, Easter

Adeline is officially a ballerina! The leotard hasn't arrived yet, but she has on her tights and her bun! Didn't have on her slippers in this picture. We go on Tuesdays and Thursdays for an hour. This picture is for Cynthia! Thank you for the bow! Adeline has now realized that a picture looks much better if you smile. This was our third try. I would take a picture and then she would approve or disapprove after looking at the preview.

We went to the Feria (fair) this weekend. You could compare it to a stockshow. Lot's of animals and vendors. We sat and watched some calf roping and of course Adeline rode a horse.

Look closely. This is one of Adeline's signature face.

I am organizing an Easter Egg Hunt for families of Barrick employees (and anyone else who wants to joine). These are the invites that I made. My favorite is the one with the ribbon, but it was going to cost too much to buy the ribbon so I settled with the mini brads. It's hard to read so here's the poem:

Come and join us on Easter Day
For an egg hunt and lots of play.
Hide and seek the treasures around.
Let's celebrate Easter where Dominican beauty is found.

We are having it at the Botanical Gardens, of which you've seen pictures in other posts. Dominicans celebrate Semana Santa (Holy Week) which coincides with what we call Easter. There isn't any bunnies or eggs, so hosting an egg hunt is going to be lots of fun :) We'll have to dye eggs the old fashion way without the fun stickers and dye tablets.

B for Butterfly

The letter of the week is B and Adeline has learned the first part of Eph 4:32. We created a butterfly with colored rice. I got the colored rice recipe off of www.oldfashionedliving.com/riceart. I liked it since it used vinegar instead of rubbing alcohol and it recommended using a throw-away container instead of a plastic bag. I ended up using an old formula can which I could ealy rinse inbetween colors.

It's fun trying to be creative. When I wrote the letter B for Adeline I realized that it could be half of a butterfly and then to boot butterfly starts with B.

Bravo, Market, One Way

I found out the hard way not to shop at Bravo (supermarket) on Tuesday mornings! It was packed wall to wall. Once I saw the produce section I turned myself right around. I was not about to fight Dominicans over produce :) I have started giving Darton goat's milk (it's more similar to human milk than cow's) and the Bravo that is located about 30minutes from us is the only store that carries it. Unfornately it wasn't there yesterday or today when I went back.

The busy produce section at Bravo prompted me to finally go to the open market. Here are a couple of photos from the market. It is located at the fairgrounds and right now they are having what I would call a stockshow. I am so thankful for the small blessings of new things to do to distract me now that family has left.

I made sure to take Ana so the Gringa wasn't taken advantage of with higher prices.
Darton enjoying an orange. Fresh fruit vendors are found along all the streets and at many intersections. Men come up to your car with the rind peeled off of the orange and cut in half to eat. They leave the white part of the rind on and you suck out the juice.

I have found that I really enjoy Bravo on Churchill. They carry things that I'm used to seeing at grocery stores in the States. I discovered they have SweetnLow (sorry Dad I didn't know this before you came), shredded coconut, and organic juices. A few weeks ago I was so excited to find organic juices that I bought a small (under a 1/2 gallon) bottle of Pomegranate juice. This week I looked at the price.....I paid $500RD ($15) for that little baby. It was good while I was ignorant, but now that I know the price I can't bring myself to drink juice at that price without feeling guilty!

Dominicans are ones to do things one way and when someone asks for it another way it throws them for a loop. Coffee here is very strong, in fact it's probably expresso. I'm thinking this is why they only sell coffee in small cups...small as in half the size of a small Starbucks cup. I finally found a lady who was willing to do something out of the norm when I bought coffee at the cafe in Bravo!! My first attempt to get coffee in a larger cup was to ask for 2 cafe con leches and then ask for her to pour them into a large juice cup. Thankfully she was smart enough to make the coffee directly into the juice cup...and I say smart enough, because the way that I tried to order it is how most servers would have given it to me. No joke, it's really hard for them to do something that they aren't used to doing. So YEAH for yesterday and the lady at the cafe...I should have gotten her name...I know that going the next time doesn't mean I'll get my cafe grande.

I went on a hunt for food coloring today...no luck. Only went to 2 grocery stores though. It's one of the challenges of living here. You never know where to get little things like that. I through the Super Pola (grocery store) men for a loop when I was asking for color por comida. They had to bring down the big boss who speaks English...it was pretty funny. He suggested Carrefour, a French department store. I thought his recommendation was interesting. I'll check it out next time I'm out that way. P.S. wasted time looking for food coloring...I HAD SOME IN MY PANTRY!

The Past Week

Last week my parents and grandparents came to visit us. Our week was so full that I didn't have time to sit down and blog. Plus, time at the computer meant time away from them. Here are a few pics of our week.
Monday: Colonial Zone

Tuesday: Botanical Gardens, Horse Riding, Park

Thursday: Aquarium

Friday: Beach & Darton's bday celebration (mth early)

Saturday: Mine

Horses & Gardens

Yesterday we started our residency process (blood drawn, chest xray). It's not a hard process when you ahve someone from Barrick doing all the "leg work".

The residency stuff caused Scotty to stay home from work. We finally made it to the fair grounds to ride the pony that our friends have recommended. It was ALMOST like being back in Texas :)...or Elko for that matter.

Today we went to the Botanical Gardens with Anastasia & Hartleigh and Kathryn, Jonathan, & Katie. All of our 2 yrs old enjoyed each other and being outdoors.

While on a walk through the park close to ur house, I found a doggy area for Sarah to play in. The unwritten rules are that your dog has to be at least 6mhts old and had all of her shots. So not only do I have to find playmates for my kids, but now my dog too! If we can make it there once a week, we'll be doing good.

We now have Skype and are under Scott Geer II. Let me know if you communicate through Skype.

Darton Saying "No"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkK7RIk99Wg

Here's a video of Darton communicating "no". He's 10 1/2 mths now.

Adeline's Peformance

Well I haven't been successful with posting the video directly on this pg from YouTube, so here's the URL.
For the last 8wks Adeline has listened to the Mama Mia soundtrack daily. Now if only I can get her to memorize her Bible verses ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVE1FbuIPd0

Get-a-way Weekend

Here are a few pics from our weekend. We went to Samana for Friday night and saw whales on Saturday morning before heading to Cabrera for Saturday night. On the way home on Sunday we stopped at the Blue Lagoon. Both hotels are ones we'd go back to. We are definately going back to Cabrera. Here are links to the two places we stayed at - http://www.lacatalina.com/ & http://www.tamborahotel.com/.

A few posts back I blogged about getting a ticket for not having a seatbelt. It hit me this week that as you read the blog you were probably thinking "duh" just put on your seatbelt. We'll here's a picture to explain why I was dumbfounded that I got a ticket here for not wearing a seatbelt.

Grocery Store Treasures

We had a wonderful get-a-way wkend that I'll write about when I don't have a teething baby at my legs.

In the meantime I wanted to write before I forgot about the treaures that I found at the grocery store today - wheat flour, natural peanut butter, all natural apple juice. It was wonderful!!