The next day we went down to Temple Square with some of my family to see the lights. It had been a long time since I had done that. The lights were really pretty as usual, and there were a lot of really pretty Nativity scenes. We had a great time and survived the cold!
The angel decided she needed to ride the donkey.
Jake was the donkey and I was Mary. Afterward we sang some Christmas songs. We had a wonderful time with family. On Christmas we went to Jake's parent's house. On our way up there, the snow was crazy. It had probably snowed about a foot and still snowing and the wind was blowing. The city hadn't gotten out to plow yet, so we had a hard time getting to his parent's house. It took us 3 times to get up his parents driveway in our truck that has 4 wheel drive. It was pretty crazy. We enjoyed seeing what his new brother and sister got for Christmas. We just hung out for the day with his family. In the afternoon we had a great time sledding in all the snow that we were getting. We had a wonderful Christmas with Jake's family and hope the weather is clear tomorrow so we can head down to Utah and celebrate with my family.
The room before we painted it. All a lavender purple, definitely not for a boy!
Our baby's room after!
| Ingredients: | |
| 1 can Coke 1 tsp. Garlic 3/4 c. Ketchup 1/2 c. Brown Sugar 1/4 c. Barbecue Sauce 1/4 c. Coke | |
| Directions: | |
| Pour 1 can Coke on any size pork roast. Cook for 5-7 hours on low (crock pot). After the roast has cooked, shred with Coke still in pan. Drain Coke and Fat. Mix the rest of the ingredients together and pour over the roast. Cook another 1-2 hours. Recipe may need to be doubled for larger roast. |
We had a great time decorating the tree and getting our house ready for Christmas!
We've also put up most of our Christmas lights outside. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Now all we need it snow!
Last year we made taffy, but we didn't really like how it turned out, so we decided to try another recipe. Well, it took a LONG time to get the taffy to the soft crack stage. 
We had fun pulling the taffy. One of the girls even got a blister on her hand from pulling! The taffy was supposed to be while, but it turned out a caramel color. the taffy was hard too. Last year our taffy turned out a lot better, even though not that great. We always have next year to try again!
Our final product
One day there was a karaoke final that Jake sang in. He sang “La Bamba.” He did a pretty good job. He missed the starting of one line, but other than that he did really well
. There were five singers and he took 3rd out of the five. He should have taken 2nd. The second place winners did “Copacabana” and they were terrible singers. The reason they won was because they had costumes and a gay guy dressed up in a ladies dress and they just put on a show, so they were put in front of Jake. The ship had a boat building contest to see who could build the best boat that could hold the most weight. 
Our boat was called the Stork and was on its way to Pocatello to make a delivery. It held 8 cans of soda. There were some boats that held 24 cans. We went to a lot of activities where we earned dam dollars that at the end of the cruise we cashed them in for prizes. We had over 220 dam dollars. We were able to get a bag, a sweatshirt, a shirt, and a towel with our dam dollars. The activities have kept us busy. We also were in a pentathlon. We’ve had to putt in golf, ring toss, football throw, shuffleboard, and free throw shooting. Jake won the pentathalon by shooting 9 out of 10 free throws. 
There was a ceremony where he got a bottle of champagne, a sweatshirt, and a picture frame. We sold the bottle of champagne for $5. We were also on two game shows that they had. One was a men vs. women where we had to see if we thought the same way as the other men or women our team. The men barely won. The other game was the Marriage Game. Jake and I were on as newly weds. We took second place. We should have taken first, but I messed up on one of the answers. It didn’t matter. The first prize was a bottle of champagne, so we didn’t need it anyway. There was lots of really good entertainment. We had a comic magician that was really good, a comedian, these 2 guys that played one piano that were amazing, flamenco dancers, and a few singers.
Well, after walking to the castle, we realized the castle was really close to our ship, so we backtracked about 1 mile or more from where we got dropped off. The castle wasn't worth it at all.
Where they lift up the draw bridge.
What was interesting about the castle was there was a time when there wasn't any work on the island and everyone wanted to leave. The king decided to pay the locals to build him a castle so they would stay. That's the only reason why the castle was there. It was a very small castle and there was a very small art museum inside. We walked quite a bit today.
After we realized that we could ride a camel at the top of the volcano we were going to maybe get a taxi to take us up there, but the taxi wanted a lot of money and we decided that it wasn’t worth it. This is not an island that I would ever come back to. It is very desolate and not much grows here. Not what I expected a Canary Island to look like.
We found a really pretty park and just walked around in it and took pictures. 
A lot of things were closed and the things that were open cost more money to do than we wanted to spend, so after walking in the park, we just went back to the boat. The island is a really pretty island and we enjoyed our time that we had there.
We also saw a couple of Catholic churches, but it seems like all the churches are starting to look the same. We went shopping for a souvenir from Portugal and found some of the clappers flamenco dancers use in their dancing and they said Portugal on them, so we got them as a souvenir. After that we went back to the boat because there wasn’t anything else to do in the city. It was a pretty boring port, compared to a lot of the ports we have been to in the past.
