Amber's birthday came first. October 12th marked 28 years of age. Amber taught in the morning and was serenaded "Happy Birthday" by some of her students and then had a great lunch with a co-worker and in the afternoon had an in-service with all the elementary music teachers in the district. That evening we went to Texas Roadhouse for steak and margaritas (for Amber) and beer (for John). We did not let them know that it was Amber's birthday because there is no way Amber is riding that saddle thing! All in all it was a very enjoyable day.
John wasn't able to laugh about Amber being old for too long because on October 18th he turned 28 as well. Unfortunately John had to work late on his birthday so we celebrated a day early with dinner at one of our favorite Janesville restaurants The Speakeasy. We had some great brick oven pizza and great martini's!
Even though our birthdays were great the most exciting thing about Rocktober was our trip to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Instead of buying each other birthday gifts we like to plan a trip during our birthday month and this year we decided to venture back to the Dominican Republic. We spent our honeymoon in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic in October 2009 and had a great time so we decided to go back to the Dominican this year.
We left on Thursday October 26th for a five day and four night stay at the Barcelo Capella Resort in Santo Dominigo with our friends Megan and Avery. We enjoyed every minute of 85 degree weather, sunshine, island breezes, great food and fun with friends. It's wonderful when the decisions that you have to make are "Do we sit at the beach or do we sit by the pool?" and "Do I have a pina colada or do I have a margarita?" The only hang up we had on the trip was that we nearly missed our connecting flight in Fort Lauderdale back to Chicago because it took us over 2 hours in customs! They held the plane and we made it back just fine. It was a great trip and I think we made Megan and Avery Dominican Republic lovers as well!
Thursday after we got back home from vacation we had our first volleyball game in our league. We're not the best volleyball players, but we do like to play so when a co-worker of Amber's asked us if we'd be interested in joining we were thrilled. The games didn't go so well for our team and we lost all three games, but during the third game John fell on his ankle funny and when he went to urgent care the next day we found out that he severely sprained his ankle. He was put in a brace for two weeks and although the ankle is feeling better now it's still not fully healed.
Last weekend Amber traveled to Appleton to spend some time with her grandparents and to go to her friend Cristina's baby shower. It was nice to spend some time with all the "Music Girls" and to meet the newest addition to our group, Mallory and Mike's son Jacob!
Well until next time! Go Pack Go!
The beach at our resort.
John and Amber having dinner at our resort.
Amber's Lobster Thermidor (amazing!)
The mini-golf hole where Amber got a hole-in-one!
A walk along the beach at sunset.
Amber, John, Megan and Avery on the beach at sunset.
Our "Music Girls" group. Amie, Mallory (and Jacob), Cristina, Justine and Amber.
Amber and baby Jacob.
