Thursday, September 23, 2010

Chef Willie


A few days ago I came home from work to Willie cooking a delicious dinner! He went grocery shopping earlier this week and got some pork chops. Willie wanted to find a really good recipe and try it out. So, he googled and read up all about barbequeing pork chops and made THE BEST dinner ever!
It really tasted like it came from a restaurant. He brinned the pork chops and made a delicious marinade, and then cooked them in the barbeque behind our apartment building.



We had them with baked potatos and green beans. I didn't get a picture of the finished product, but it was really so good. By far the best homemade food we've had yet. Thanks Willie! :)

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Our Honeymoon--Part 2

So, here is the rest of our honeymoon finally! Being on the ship on our cruise was really nice in a lot of ways. We loved being able to relax so much, and there were fun things to do. We both agree that the ports were the most fun part, though. We went to Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, and Cabo San Lucas.


This was in the taxi in our first port, Puerto Vallarta. We got completely ripped off with this taxi ride! Willie had gone somewhere, and this taxi driver came up to talk to me while I was waiting. We chatted while Willie was gone, and then when we got back we went to get in the taxi and he told us a price that was three times what the internet had told us to expect! I didn't feel comfortable negotiating with him though because he'd been so "nice" to me before. Willie told me this was probably just so he could rip us off, but I couldn't do it. It was our first port, too. I got better later. It's a shame Willie wasn't the one who spoke Spanish though, because I was no good at negotiating prices.

Something that I really wanted to do on our cruise was snorkel. We went snorkeling at Puerto Vallarta because that was the port we had the most time at. It was a little ghetto and they didn't even have flippers for us to use, but I was happy and it was so fun.

Our boat driver
After we went snorkeling, our boat driver showed us a good place to get tacos.

Willie watching the world cup while he ate

After lunch, we walked around Puerto Vallarta. There was this cool walkway along the coast with lots of different statues and art.


Our next port was Mazatlan. It was my favorite!! The water was wonderful and warm, and there was a lot of fun stuff to see. When we got off we caught a taxi (they were these golf cart open taxis, I loved them), and went to the beach and spent most of the day there. We swam and built sand castles, and it was so fun!!


After the beach, we headed over to diver's point. We would have had no idea about this place, but my mom had printed something off about all of the ports for us before we left...thanks Mom!! There was this high cliff thing that the divers would get on and dive in between these rocks. It was so nerve wracking and cool to watch! Check it out. Sorry it's sideways...is there a way to flip it around?



After we watched them dive, Willie hiked up to where they were diving from. It was so scary to watch! There were no railings, and it was really high up. I went to where they had railings, and then stopped. After that, we got a taxi to take us back to the ship. We asked the taxi driver if on the way he would give us a quick tour of Mazatlan. He was seriously the best. We paid him hardly anything extra and he took us all around. He spent so much time with us. He always offered to let us get out and have him take a picture of us, and explained what each place was. He even sang us a song at one place! Willie and I liked him so much that when we bought our souvenir from the cruise, our first Christmas ornament, we got a little Mexican guy that kinda looked like him haha.

Here are a couple pictures from our tour:

Our taxi driver insisted we get a picture pretending to drive his taxi




They had stars on the floor with famous people's names from Puerto Vallarta. This is where our driver sang us a song.


Our final port was Cabo San Lucas. We only had a little bit of time there, but it was Willie's favorite. It was beautiful, and I loved it. Not my favorite for swimming though. The water was a lot colder than the other ports, and the sand was kind of rough on my feet. Willie really liked the rocks though, and wanted to climb them. I think he wished he was there with his brothers and guy friends so they could hike them. I think this because he kept talking about coming back with them and their wives, so that all of us wives could stay on the beach (what I was wanting to do when he told me about this future trip), while the boys hiked :)



We went on a glass bottom boat ride around Cabo. At the end it dropped us off at Lover's Beach.



We saw Sea Lions on our boat ride!!




We had to take little boats back to our cruise ship. The driver let everyone sitting up front drive it for a bit. It was pretty fun!

After our cruise, on the way back to Mesquite, we drove right through San Bernadino, where Willie served his mission. Willie was able to show me around a bit, which was really cool. This was one of the apartments he lived in!

We stayed in Mesquite, rented another red box movie, had pizza, and drove back to Utah the next day. It was so hard to come back to real life. We loved our honeymoon!