My Good Friend Bryce is Amazing!

Bryce has a Christmas tradition in his family. Every year, they get together and exchange white elephant gifts. One gift has been in his family for 25 years, a statue of the Venus de Milo, who lost its head the first year of the gift exchange. Every year, it's regifted and someone in the family is the lucky recipient to watch over it for a year. Last year, his aunt lost the statue and his family was so mad at her! But luckily, she found it again, and Bryce made this video and showed it at the party. He is very creative, and amazing at his talents, one being video making. Watch and spread the word! (I helped take pictures for it, so I feel like it's kind of my video too :) ).

FINALLY! Last Vacation Day...

The last day of our trip, we spent another day in Seattle. We spent time at Pike's Market, went to the top of the Space Needle, ate the best doughnuts with frosting, and I went to my first NFL game, Seattle Seahawks played the Minnesota Vikings. Such a fun day, but I was completely exhausted by the end of the day! So sad my trip was over, but ready to get back to Utah and get my classroom ready for another school year!

I can finally start posting about other updates in my life, I'm so sorry it took so long to post about my vacation. However, I loved this trip so much, and wanted to remember my experiences for my future!

BVOML Day 8: Victoria, Canada

This was probably my favorite day from the whole cruise, if it's even possible to choose a favorite day out of so many awesome ones! We sailed to Victoria, Canada that night and had our excursion time from 6 PM to Midnight. We decided to do the Butchart Gardens and Butterfly Gardens in Victoria. It was about a 30 minute bus ride to the gardens from the ship, and the drive through Victoria was beautiful! I liked the Butterfly Gardens but Butchart Gardens blew my mind. It was the prettiest place I have ever been on Earth, and it was HUGE!! We went at evening, and the lighting made it beautiful, but I would love to see it during the day as well. They said they change it every season, I want to go back at Christmas time! The pictures definitely don't do this place justice (it was so beautiful that it actually moved me to tears...not that that is difficult to do, but still!) but I hope you enjoy, and want to go back with me sometime soon!

BVOM:-Day 7-Ketchikan

Ketchikan was the prettiest Alaskan city that we stopped at, and yet sadly, it was the city we spent the least amount of time in, Bryce and I's biggest regret from the whole trip. The dock time was from 7 AM-noon, and I'm sorry but I was on vacation, and vacation to me does NOT involve getting up before 7 AM. However, if I had known how awesome Ketchikan was, I would have made the exception just this once. I guess that means I will have to go back and visit! We walked around the shops for a bit, and then went to a lumberjack show. It was a little cheesy, but funny and I was impressed by what they could do. Bryce and I LOVE fish tacos and are always on the hunt for finding yummy ones, so we stopped at a place there and ate some. Pretty good! By then, it was time to get back on the boat. :( But I loved our morning walk around the city, I couldn't get over how beautiful it was!

Since it was such a short dock excursion day, we got to spend a lot of free time on the ship, and Bryce and I finally did more than just take naps and watch movies in our cabin (I loved doing that, but I kind of wish I would have done some more activities on the ship!) It was fun to walk around and do and see different things on the ship-it was a very memorable day for me!

That night was the last night we would be eating in the formal dining room (The next night we would dock at dinner time in Victoria, Canada), so the dining staff put on a fun musical dinner, we loved it! I was kind of sad to know I wouldn't see them anymore, our waiters and drink guy were hilarious! After dinner of course, we went to another awesome show! (Blogging about this REALLY makes me want to go back on a cruise!!)

BVOML, Day 6-Sitka

The next day on our cruise found us in Sitka, Alaska, a quaint, small Alaskan city known for it's fishing industry (as well as being the city where The Proposal was set, although the film was NOT filmed in the actual city of Sitka). Bryce and I wanted to check out the "cathedral" first-the night before each excursion day, the cruise line gives you a map of the city where we would be porting and different sites around the city. Based on this info given to us, we thought this cathedral would be cool. Funny thing about is, when we got there, in order to get into the actual cathedral you had to pay a 5 dollar donation-but it wasn't a donation, it was mandatory! The cathedral turned out to be a small church. It had it's little perks, but not 5 dollars worth! After spending about 10 minutes in it, we decided to go explore some shops in the city. Our favorite one was the Chocolate Moose. They sold yummy chocolate, as well as cute crafts. We both spent some money in there! It was a fun site seeing city, so beautiful with water surrounding it, as well as big, green mountains. My favorite part of Sitka was this boy singing American Pie. He was probably around 11 years old, and sang and play the guitar so beautifully. My heart melted, and I could have sat and listened to him perform all day! That night was the second formal night of dinner. After a yummy dinner and a fun performance of a guy impersonating Elton John (He was amazing and super funny!), we went to the deck of the ship, where they were having a chocolate party. I have never seen so much chocolate in one place, and the displays were beautiful! I was really excited to eat chocolate from the chocolate fountain, but the worker accidentally got chocolate over my formal dress...embarrassing! (PS, my mom had to work hard to get the stains out. But she's a pro at getting stains out and you can't even tell now that there was chocolate all over my dress. Thanks mom!) Such a fun, memorable night!

Downtown Sitka

The "cathedral"

Cutest singer ever!

Beautiful Sitka!

Chocolate Moose-Loved this store!

Formal Night #2

It was so cold on the deck-but so pretty!

Becky and I waiting for the Elton John show to start

Bryce and I waiting for the Elton John show to start.

Notice the chocolate? Yeah...it was a mess!

Grand Piano-made from chocolate!
Yep, made from chocolate!

Yummy! There was lots and lots more chocolate than this even...chocolate heaven!