M&M's: Feliz Navidad!

Whew! Another 2 week review and it was a busy 2 weeks!

Audrey and Redick got into the Christmas spirit all on their own one afternoon

The preschool group at the kids school put on a special Christmas program for the families. They sang and danced so well! There was also a pot luck afterward. R&R are in the back on the left. Am I the only one who just cries all the way through these kinds of things with my kids?!!?! I'm not normally a very sentimental or emotionally driven person but I always cry when they perform! It was a wonderful show and will be a fond memory forever!

Audrey and her class also had a Christmas performance with the rest of the school. Mitchell and I were so amused because all of the other little girls wore white tights but Audrey wasn't asked to. Could it be because her legs are already white? Haha!

A few weeks ago we got to assemble Christmas bags to give away to children. It was a great experience to be able to assemble the bags but the icing on the cake was being able to participate in delivering the bags and visiting with the children. We got to meet a wonderfully Christ-like man, Dean, who runs a preschool out of his home 6 days a week. The poorest of children walk to his house from the hills outside of Managua. Some walks up to 3 miles to come. He feeds them breakfast and they sing and dance and learn. Last Saturday we got to join him and the sweet kiddos for their Christmas party. We had an absolute blast! About 60 kids, ranging in age from 1year to 14 years came.

No party in Nicaragua is complete without the pinata! In fact, many times they refer to the party as the Pinata.

Of course the mob when the candy comes out!

Everyone is lining up to receive their Christmas bag

Audrey, Redick and Reid got to hand them out!

Is it any wonder this boy is a total heart throb around here?!?! SO handsome!

The kids are out of school for a month for Christmas break! They made a list of things they want to do before they go back to school. We're working our way through the list! First up, gingerbread house decorating! I bought preassembled kits from our local panaderia (bakery). They had a lot of fun with it.

Not much candy on the house yet, but plenty in the mouth!

Next up on the Christmas break bucket list, check out the skate park! These kids love riding their scooters at the skate park. This was a pretty good one too.

Layne keeps right up with the big kids!

Tuesday I spent a large part of the day with our new friend Dean. We visited several people who needed some love and we helped a 14 year old boy get molds taken of his eye to be fitted with a new prosthetic eye. 3 years ago he was playing outside of his house and found a washed up hand grenade leftover from previous wars. He didn't have a clue what it was and while he was tossing it around it blew up and he lost his left eye. We also visited La Chureca aka the municipal garbage dump. There are about 1,000 people who live in the dump and about half of them are children. Dean visits the children at the dump daily and brings them lunch and dinner 7 days a week. It was very touching to see them and get to interact with them a bit.

If anyone is interested in learning more about Dean and his wonderful ministry here let me know. We plan to be involved in other outreach programs with him. Here is his donation page for the charitable work he does here. 100% of donated funds go directly to the kids. http://pureheartchildren.org/private/

The Christmas break bucket list continues with a trip to the zoo! We brought along our friend Karla and her 2 sons. This was Karla's first ever visit to a zoo! It was a fun day and we saw all of the animals.

Thanks to this monkey letting Audrey touch his tail she now wants a pet monkey! I can't imagine another monkey around this place!

We visited the butterfly exhibit at the zoo and this monarch butterfly landed on Redick's finger and stayed put the whole time we were in there. He had to shake it off when it was finally time to leave!

Santa found us!

The kids are excitedly waiting for the ok for them to go downstairs to see what Santa brought!

Church today started at 10 so that gave us plenty of time to eat breakfast and open presents before church. It was organized chaos and so much fun!

I gave a talk in sacrament meeting today too. It was based on Elder Russell M. Nelson's talk on Joy and Spiritual Survival. I told a story about my sister Lynn while she was enduring her cancer treatments. She has always been a very upbeat and positive person. She always looks at the bright side of everything! A couple of years ago after one of her surgeries I was feeling really worried about her and her family. I called her and she comforted me! She told me that having cancer had, in many ways, been a big blessing. I couldn't believe it and she was serious too! She told me that having to face this trial together had strengthened her marriage so much that given the choice she would choose it again! She is amazing.

After church we had a really neat opportunity! We got to go to the dump (La Chureca) with the whole family this time. Once again Audrey, Redick and Reid got to hand out the Christmas bags. It was a really meaningful and wonderful way to spend a part of the Christmas afternoon. We handed out over 100 bags with toys, school supplies, trinkets, snacks and rice and beans.