December 2016--Hawaiian Cruise

We were invited by friends to go on a cruise to Hawaii in December of 2016.
It was a crazy idea. Who goes on a 3 week cruise the
first of December and gets back 2 days before Christmas?
Well, we did.  We started our Hawaii cruise on Dec. 4, 2016.
We boarded the ship in San Diego, CA.

Off on our adventure.  5 days at sea!!

We ate often and a lot, and played games, and attended classes, and programs. 

 Fun, fun time with our friends.

We finally arrived in Honolulu on December 10th and went 

straight to the temple where we attended an endowment session. 

It was a special experience.

And then we headed to the Polynesian Cultural Center.  

We found some Blanding friends,

Worthy and Gail Glover, who were serving a mission there.

And then we walked around and  saw the amazing programs performed there at the cultural center.

On day 8, December 11th,  we visited the island of Hilo.  It was beautiful

That night we lined up on deck and were able to watch volcanos in the distance

Day 9, Dec 12th, we spent the day on the island of Kona.  We went on a glass bottom boat and saw lots of cool things!

Once again, the island was beautiful.

Day 10, Dec. 13th was spent on the island of Nawiliwili

We got to see a real native!

And, we visited some Hawaiian chickens! 

And then we visited the beautiful Waimea Canyon

On day 11, December 14th, we arrived in Lahaina. 

We visited a park with these crazy, huge, intertwangled banyan trees.

                   And then we went on a whale watching excursion.  It was amazing.  So fun!!

After seeing the whales, we got a bonus and came across a pod of dolphins!

When we got back to the ship, we found they had decorated for Christmas.

Now, it was time to start out return trip, more sea days before we would arrive back in San Diego!

We had one more stop to make along the way.  On December 20th, we arrived in Ensenada, Mexico.  We spent the day there exploring and visiting the shops.  

                                    We were sad that it was time to say goodbye to our friends
                                    that we met at dinners as they were the most awesome servers.

                                       And after more fun programs and--------

                                   finding cute little animals folded from the towels on our beds,

or over our beds!!

we arrived back in San Diego.

This is what it/we looked like as we got off the ship.

We were taken to the motel by a shuttle.  

                                    This is what we and our luggage looked like at the motel:

We had two things to do in San Diego.  The first was 

to go to the Mormon Battalion historic site.  I didn't

take pictures there for some reason but we had

this fun picture taken of our group.

The second thing we need to do was to go to the BYU

football game.  It was the Poinsettia Bowl and 

BYU was playing Wyoming.  

Here is a headline about the game.  It was a close one!!

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             “BYU managed to stave off Wyoming 24-21 to win the Poinsettia Bowl from 

               Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego on Wednesday night.”

We got back to Blanding in time to celebrate Christmas in our usual fun way!!

It was very special as usual.  Love my family.  And I am 

so grateful for the birth of the Savior.

And then, the day after Christmas there was enough snow to go tubing.  

What a great way to end off this year "2016"!!!