A walk around El Puerto ...

 

The girls and I enjoyed a walk around our little part of El Puerto one beautiful night.  We sure have fallen in love with this area and will be very sad to leave to go back to the USA.  Jenna found this little snail and wanted a picture of it, we found the awesome fish mural on the side of a house and these awesome balls to pose on!  A very successful walk out in the beautiful world!

El Puerto Chapel ...

 We have loved attending church here in El Puerto.  The people here have been incredible to our little family an we will really miss it.  It is so fun to see the church in other parts of the world and get to see the strong members of the church everywhere we go!  The church is an amazing thing.  When you travel the world it makes it feel a lot smaller, but inside the church 'world' the world really is small and you can typically find someone who knows someone you do.  Pretty amazing for sure!

Crocodile Farm ...

 This adventure takes the top spot of coolest, not planned, get off at the next exit because you saw a billboard excursion EVER!!!!  On our way home from Granada, after we had gone through Malaga, we saw a billboard advertising a crocodile farm.  We literally jumped off the highway, took the roundabout and drove right to the crocodile farm.  It must have been meant to be as the next tour was in about 30 minutes. So we made lunch in the car and ate it before going in to see the awesome crocodiles.  As you can tell from the pictures, we even got to hold a baby one.  This one was about four months old.  The guide jumped in with them and made them snap at him, go into the water and told us all sorts of interesting facts.  Owen was not at all sure about those loud crocodiles but he enjoyed it still. The big 'daddy' crocodile was huge!  He was definitely the boss of the pen.  The guide made him make noise and he sounded pretty scary!  Certainly wouldn't want that thing after me! It was a pretty cool experience for all of us!

Flamenco in Granada ...

Not very easy to catch a good picture, but we were able to get a few videos of this fun night.  It was loud and lots of stomping was involved but the kids seemed to be mesmerized by it!  Flamenco would make me so tired!  The pounding on the feet and clapping of the hands would make both very, very tired. 

A quick drive through Malaga ...

 We have a friend back home in Idaho Falls whose son is serving a mission in the Malaga, Spain mission.  We decided to drive through the city on our way home to snap a few pictures of what the city looks like.  It was a beautiful city, even though we didn't get out because it was so wet.  I just loved all of the poinsettia flowers planted right in the ground.  It was gorgeous!

The views of Granada ...

 The views from above cities are usually quite amazing!  Granada was no exception.  We hiked to the top of the old Fortress and got rewarded with pretty amazing views! 

Being silly ...

 Outside the door of the Alhambra Palace was this funny little place that we could stick our heads out of.  The kids thought it was great to be kids and we took quite a few pictures ... these are only the highlights of them!  Fun times!!

La Alhambra...

Up until this point in our trip we have had amazing weather, or at least were able to stay in from the rain...not the case this weekend.  When it rains in Spain, it is serious about it.  Not much for drizzling, sprinkling rain, it is a hard downpour!  Thankfully we got a mixture of both today and were able to stay mostly dry.  The umbrellas sure came in handy though.

 

The Alhambra is one of the most visited places in all of Europe and makes the top three in Spain.  It started as a fortress in about 890.  After that it was built upon by the Moorish people and built into the Palace it is today.  It was quite ornate and decorated with beautiful Muslim decorations.  The gardens would have been beautiful to explore had the weather not been so crummy.  All in all a very beautiful place, albeit quite wet!