What no blog for 2 weeks?? What has been going on I hear you all ask? To tell the absolute truth – my best friend arrived from England for a 2 week vacation (it was also my 40th birthday!) and so the whole house has been in uproar with some serious Caribbean capers and high jinks in full play! Easter holidays were 8 days this year as well from school, so it was great for The Curly One to have a week off and be spoilt rotten by his English aunty!  We also had a surprise guest from Canada up to Easter so we were bursting at the seams, but we all managed to fit in somehow and sleep after many Presidente’s – strange that!!

The BBQ took quite a hammering, the pool boy has been working over time and now finally on Monday morning after all guests have left I can fly my fingers over the keyboard and fill you in on what I’ve been up to.

Check out this pic below of my lovely Easter flower garden!
So here I am, sipping my English tea (thanks Anna!) and sighing with a little melancholy as the house regains its normal quietness and I try and get over my sudden home sickness which always happens when my friend leaves and I am left wondering “should I really be living here in the Dominican Republic?” when all long standing friends and of course family are thousands of miles away across the Atlantic! It will pass after a couple of days as it always does but even after 11 years those home sickness pangs still pop up and surprise me.

The weather has been fantastic though over the last few weeks, wonderful brilliant blue skies and breezy balmy nights.  Bars have been revisited that I have not been to in probably over 2 years, Dominican friends have been re found, a trip on the ocean was taken on the awesome Freestyle Catamarans, roulette was spun at night in Jack Tar Casino and taste buds were in over drive heaven from Thomas at Papillion’s Restaurant in Cofresi.  We also catered for 30 kids who are here in the Dominican Republic on a 2 week charity venture from Canada staying on the mountain tourist road one evening (in the most incredible setting that I will tell you about later) and do some serious Al Fresco cooking for them while my little boy had the time of his life running campo style through the meadows and hillsides!

Below is a very hung over picture of setting up the "Peavey Power Pack of Mischief" the morning after my birthday party!! 

And how could I forget the time and energy my fantastic friends devoted in throwing me a “surprise” 40th Birthday party last Saturday evening! Complete with posters of child hood shots, phallic birthday cake (yes!!) and a stunning surprise mega present that all my friends had chipped in for! I was given a Peavey 150 watt powered mixer transportable sound/pa system! In other words a blasting sonic sound system that you can transport as its folds away in a hard carrying case and you can do an impromptu band get together on the beach, karaoke night, sing along by the camp fire, plug in your Ipod at parties and dance all till dawn,…the list goes on and on!! As we are all a rather social bunch over here in the Dom Rep the “Peavey Power Pack of Mischief” will be traveling a lot I surmise in the near future!  Yes you do need somewhere to plug it in, but you know how resourceful we are in the DR and there is always a power supply in the unlikeliest of places that can be utilized! What power from a palm tree? “You ain’t seen nothing yet” as the famous BTO once sang!