Uruguay

Chris and I talked months ago about taking a trip down to Uruguay where he went on his mission. At first we sort of joked around about it, but the more we talked about it, the more we wanted to do it. So we saved our pennies and went down there for Christmas this year. It was absolutely amazing! It was beautiful and warm and we were able to do so many fun things. We ended up spending Christmas eve and Christmas on the beach (after going to church of course) and we hiked up a mountain, took a day trip into Brazil, window shopped at many different little street fairs, and did so many other fun things that I can't enumerate them all here. Instead, I've just added a few pictures below.
Every city and town in Uruguay has at least one plaza and each contains some sort of statue or fountain and they're all beautiful. This fountain was in the middle of Montevideo.

Chris was still on his mission when they opened the temple in Montevideo so he got to work at the open house and go through it a couple of times.

This was a small town along the Atlantic coast that had beautiful beaches and very few people.

This is the largest plaza in Montevideo. It's called the Plaza De Independencia and the statue is of the great leader for independence in Uruguay.

We went to a few different zoos while we were down there. They were pretty funny because only a chain link fence separated us from most of the animals, so we could reach in and pet them if we wanted to. Chris wouldn't pet this nandu no matter how much I begged him.

Uruguay has so much coastline that they had to build many lighthouses. This was just too beautiful not to take a picture.

We were able to meet up with one person Chris knew on his mission. Pedro spent a lot of time with the missionaries while Chris was on his mission, so he got to know him really well. They kept up on facebook and we were able to contact him on our last day. This is him with his wife and daughter.

And finally, Chris and me. We were sitting on a bench outside the temple on a lovely warm day.