Thanksgiving & Monkey Stories

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. It was also the girls' graduation and school concert. The concert was amazing! So good. The costumes were so cute. Sofia was the wind and Sienna the rain. After the concert, their class, the Yellow class, stayed on stage and got their little diplomas. Sweet.

Afterwards, we went to Andrea and Shelby's for Thanksgiving lunch. They have four kids- Brea, Gabe, Drew and Elie. They are from Indiana and here for a few months. It was a nice time. We stayed about 5 hours. Andrea went all out in cooking things we would have in the US. Many of the ingredients are hard to find. We had turkey, pecan pie and lots of other goodies. The girls and I took homeade brownies and the white chocolate gorp. Thanksgiving isn't a holiday here or celebrated....

Today, I went and signed the lease for the house we will be moving into next month. It is all final. We will start moving on the 15th. It will be different but better. Much smaller but more secure and costs less.

This morning, the monkeys were everywhere at the house. Our house seems to be their favorite hang out. These winged ants are still coming out of the ground and the monkeys were going crazy jumping in the air catching them and eating them. It was so funny. I watched them for almost an hour. At one point I started to work in the yard and they just sat a few feet from me watching and playing. Then they got into the mango tree and pulled off all the baby mangos. They were eating the baby avocados and any other fruit they could find in the yard. At one point, the alpha male arrived on the scene and immediately the mood changes. The monkeys were no longer carefree and relaxed when he was around. And he was showing off. He started jumping on the plastic covering that is over the pool pump. After a while he left and they relaxed again and continued to eat the mangos. I took some video of them. I am sure the new place we are moving to doesn't have them. There are too many houses close together. The monkeys also don't go into the townships because they know they might get eaten.

The girls wrote to Santa that they want these two particular Barbies. I went to several stores to try and find them. I found them but they are sooooo expensive! One costs about 90 dollars!!! I saw it online there at Walmart for 10 dollars. Hopefully, Sal will be able to get them for the girls.

Tonight, we went to Ocean Basket, our favorite place to get calamari. The girls love calamari with lemon butter.

Afterwards, the girls got to decorate their little Christmas trees. I had brought them with me last year. They are very small but look pretty. I had tried to find some lights. I found some, paid about 8 dollars for a string of very plain lights and they didn't work when we plugged them in. They were so excited to get to decorate their trees. They both kept saying "I'm speechless, mom, just speechless!"