Monson Memoirs: Christmas 2024

Chrismas starts early here in Brazil. Lot's of decorations started going up mid-October. So, we've enjoyed the holiday cheer. On several occasions the kids have been able to meet Santa. He frequents all the malls here and he came to Jake's work Christmas party. Jane is happy to admit that she has faced her fears and she now likes Santa...just not getting too close without one of her brothers around. But she loves to talk about him bringing presents and his reindeer. All the kids and I wrote letters to him. Santa filled out a questionaire this year Louis created.

We put up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving as is our tradition. And this year Grandma and Grandpa sent us some fun new ornaments.

We also went to a Christmas fair at a park near us. And Jane and Louis both took the opportunity to go on a pony ride.

Also, the kids school year ended in mid December They all participated in end of the year performance. Kai was part of the Christmas Wonderland performance, where he and his classmates rocked out and danced to 60ies music. The older kids all performed in Mythical Legends form Brazil and around the world. Louis was the lead character in his performace: the werewolf (which is apparently a Brazillian legend). Grant was a fire character in the legend of the pheonix. Pace was a crane in the Japanese legend of the healing powers of the crane (he also was the narrator). All of their performances were wonderful. I didn capture them of video, but only got one picture from Louis's performance. We're so proud of them. Now they are all on summer break until February.

Then in the same weekend our kids performed in the Primary program. They sang and spoke their parts. Louis was brave enough to say his part in English in front of everyone. Grant translated for him into Portuguese and spoke his own part. We're so impressed with his confidence to do that, he's shown so much growth since we have been here. Pace also shared his part and did a wonderful job. Many commented to us that our kids spek Portuguese better than we do. Haha.

On a less Christmasy note we went to our friend Gustavo's birthday party. We absolutely loved the Harry Potter theme and Manu did such a great job of decorating.

Jane and I also did a thorough wash of our stuffed animals and Jane loved seeing her animals in the "bath".

Pace also participated in our Stake Primary Choir. They had two performances. They performed in a local mall and in our church. Pace played the sheperd in the live nativity and sang songs in Portugues, Spanish, and English.

As a family we travelled to Recife to participate in the Consulate holiday party and our friends Joy and John's Christmas pancake breakfast. It was fun to celebrate with them. Our kids loved playing with all their friends We also stayed overnight so we took some time to explore Recife for the first time. We explored Antigo Recife with all it's Christmas lights and enjoyed some shows that were playing.

On Saturday we checked out the Instituto Ricardo Brennand. It was really fun mix of an art museum, a sword and armor collection, and more all in an old brick castle. To top it all off the grounds were lovely and many fun wildlife were seen. We saw squirrel monkeys, an iguana, a capybara, and many birds.

We all went to see Moana and Mufasa at the movie theater. For Christmas Eve we had the sister missionaries come over. It was such a fun night and our live nativity turned out pretty great this year.

Christmas was relaxing and fun. We played lots of games, since we got a couple new ones.

And Jake had few days off after Christmas we finally took him to the aquarium and we found out they have an all new reptile, bird and animal section. And then we got to meet up with one of Jake's mission companions. He lives a couple hours from us and came to Joao Pessoa for the day so we had fun hearing their stories and then he let all the kids try out his motorcycle.