Christmas in Brasilia

We have lived in Brasilia for almost two years, and sometimes it still hits me that we are actually living in Brazil. This year for Christmas we decided to stay here due to flight costs and vacation days, plus, it is just nice to stay home and do some of our family traditions. This was our first Christmas season away from all family. Even when we lived in DC two years ago, we got together with Josh's cousin's family on Christmas. We did many of our usual traditions and added some more. We decided that since we coudn't go to any family parties in person, we would have our own family party. This will be a new tradition that we will do the years we are abroad. If any family happens to join us for Christmas while we are abroad, they can join us for our super awesome Christmas party. More details to come on the party later in this post... Now for the details of the season! I worked as a full time teacher this semester, so I didn't get around to doing extra fun things with my kids. I tried to make up for it the week before Christmas since my job has ended. Before that week we did have some wonderful Holiday season events such as the recitals and Festival of Lights at School, school Christmas parties, Breakfast with Santa at the Embassy, and a nice ward party. I did make chocolate advent calendars for the kids since I couldn't find any here and they were too expensive on Amazon.

The week before Christmas we did a whole bunch of Holiday things, including watching movies: It stared with our packages arriving on Monday. Guess what was one of those packages? It was snow from Wyoming. :-) My sister sent us the cutest gift. She sent a playdough kit with fun things, so we could pretent that we had some of their Wyoming snow.

Grinch Night - We ate Roast Beast and Who Hash. We had Green Grinch Drink (sprite died green with lemonaide ice cubes) and green popcorn while we watched the movie.

Santa in his vacation home at the Pontao in Brasilia -The Pontao is a nice place by the lake with restaurants and playgrounds. It also has a nice paved path along the beach. Last year they had a cute Christmas display, so we didn't want to miss it this year. To our surprise, it was differnt than last year. They had a carousel set up with stations to make slime. We didn't "buy" the slime station activity, but we did let the kids go on the carousel. We ate dinner at the Pontao and with dinner we got free tickets to go inside Santa's house. It was decorated super cute and Christmasy with vintage things like an old tube tv, typewriter, and old sewing machine.

Christmas candy and treats - I picked a bunch of Christmas candy and treats off Pinterest. Then, I let everyone pick one for us to make. Payson couldn't decide, and we didn't make Trexton's choice because I couldn't find ingredients to what he wanted. Josh picked peanut brittle (which ended up being Avenly's favorite), Zaylee picked fudge, Avenly picked cookie bars, and I chose english toffee because it is my favorite. The girls and I worked hard to make the treats, and we are pretty proud how they turned out.

Christmas drawings - Payson claimed to be bored one day, so we turned on Arthub for Kid's on Youtube and drew some Christmas drawings.

Christmas party - We did have a family Zoom the Sunday before this week started. It was fun because we shared talents and played catch up with everyone. We also discussed our Bosen week in July that we are very much looking forward to. Our little family party was different than our extended Zoom family party. We held this on Saturday and spent a couple hours doing fun Christmas things together. We ate the treats that we made, which also included homemade eggnog. We played Christmas charades, did a dice rolling game with prizes under cups, and we made gingerbread houses. We sent the pictures of the gingerbread houses to my family on Whatsapp because it is the best way to send a lot of pictures without having to upload them to google pictures first. We asked them to vote, and Payson's house won. They all turned out pretty cute, though.

Christmas Eve - We went to church where they had a lovely program planned. I ended up singing with a group of people one of the Christmas hymns. I didn't know I was going to sing, but they needed another alto. I am actually glad they thought of me to help at the very last second. (They literally asked me to help as they were walking up to the stand). I LOVE singing at Christmas. If I had it my way, I would do a musical number on the Sunday before Christmas every year. I can't actually remember the last Sunday before Christmas that I haven't done a musical number, so this was fulfilling for me. Later in the day we did a Nativity skit with scriptures, ordered something like Chinese food (no judging), and watched Polar Express. Avenly wanted to go to bed at 2 pm and asked every hour until it was finally bedtime. She and Zaylee wrote cute notes for Santa and made sure his cookie plate was full. Both girls fell asleep pretty quickly, but the three older kids all had a hard time sleeping the whole night. The girls woke up around midnight while Josh was still awake. Avenly read books in Payson's room for awhile because the two of them couldn't fall asleep. After trying to sleep again, the girls still couldn't so they woke me up at 2 am and kept telling me they couldn't sleep for the next two hours. They finally fell asleep around 4am ish. They all slept in until 8:30, but my body couldn't sleep in that late, so I was awake around 7:00 ish. Needless to say, I as tired all day on Christmas.

Christmas Day - I already mentioned that the kids woke up about 8:30 am on Christmas morning. Avenly jumped out of bed and said, "We slept in," just like on Home Alone. Haha They loved their gifts from everyone and it was a great morning. The big gift from Josh and I to the kids is another trip. We are splitting this trip into two, so the first part is Machu Pichu. We gave them all water backpacks. The second part of the trip is to Aruba, so to surprise them with this news, we gave them swimming suits. In both presents, I printed pictures of Machu Pichu and the beach that announced where we were going. They were excited about Aruba, but they were even more excited about Machu Pichu because they have heard so much about it.

Christmas dinner was so delightful. It was a lot of work to cook and clean up, but the food was delicious. I made homemade wassail to go with our dinner. My favorite dish was something I have never made before for Christmas dinner, but the rice recipe looked yummy. Here is the link, so I can remember for future years. After dinner with played a bored game and had homemade cheesecake for dessert.

Despite me being extra tired on Christmas, it was a great day. We love celebrating Christ's birth, and I love that when I asked my kids what Christmas is really about, they talk about Jesus. I want them to know that Jesus Christ is the center of Christmas and life. We had the opportunity to help a lot of people this year thanks to a gift to us that was for the purpose of helping others during this season. We used the money gifted to us and some of our own to buy gifts for kids at the orphanage, buy gifts for homeless children that go to a rural school about an hour outside of Brasilia, help the Venezualian refugees that are often on the corner close to our house, and gift a nice Christmas bonus to our maid who lost everything (including the money in her accounts) when her home was broken into about a month ago. She has been going through a really hard time with a divorce and depression, so being robbed on-top of everything was very hard for her. It was a good experience for the kids to give, and I hope it is something we can keep doing every year.