Christmas Time Review...

First of all, thank you to all of you for your comments about our amazing news! We are both really excited, and this Christmas felt so different for us in a lot of ways, but knowing we have a miracle comming made it so much fun! I realized I never wrote about our Christmas or how blessed the day was for us. In Sweden, they celebrate Christmas on the 24th. We were so blessed on that day. Some of our good friends invited us to their house where we ate amazing Swedish food, ( Debbie I thought of you a lot that day) we played games, we laughed, sang Christmas songs, read about the arrival of Christ to this earth, and I was just in this blissful state the whole day. When we decided to come to Sweden over the holidays, I was a little hesitant... I knew we would miss our families... that it would be hard to be away, experiencing a new kind of Christmas tradtition. However, i really can't express how the day felt to me. I did miss our families, I thought about them alot during the day, but God just placed peace in both mine and Matt's hearts. I had so many moments where I could just feel the Spirits presence. It was a day where three families who have their own traditions came together to celebrate. It was an awesome day. I was blessed by our friends' kindness. I can't say enough about the people here in Sweden. Everyday we are blessed by them. If you have looked at the pictures of our house.. then you can see all the work they did to make a place for us to call home. They have gone above and beyond to help us, and there isn't a day that goes by that we don't thank God for them!!!! Thank you to all of you!

This last week my parents were here! It was amazing! Just having them here was enough for me. We could have just stayed at home and ate bread and cheese all day and i would have been satisfied. It was extra special because 35 years ago almost exactly my parents had been in Sweden travelling around with my dad's hockey team. They spent their first Christmas together in Sweden, and they have really special memories of this place. It was really awesome to have them here! It was a bit of a harder trip for my dad, as the first night he hurt himself. It was really icy outside and he fell really hard, and hurt his hip. This slowed him down while he was here, as he wanted to go out and practice with Matt and his team. I was really sad for him that he was hurt.. but Matt and I both felt like our time with my mom and dad was such a blessed time. We had a lot of time to rest, and relax together, to play games, and just really enjoy each other. We spent new years eve at our friends house and had such an awesome time.. it was such so much fun. We ate well, talked and laughed for hours, and then were able to watch an amazing firework show but on in our friends backyard. It was just so much fun!!! We did so much more with our parents while they were here, boat trips, many meals with friends, shopping, playing games, and just like I said.. enjoying each others company. We miss them already.. and they haven't even been gone one day!

Thank you so much for all of your prayers, please keep them comming! We are planning to start studying our Swedish this week, we also have some paper work for our Visas back home that we have to start... many many things to start this week. We miss you all so much and love you all! Thanks so much for reading and commenting on our blog. It means a lot to both matt and me. I will keep you posted on hockey things also. Matt has his first game back this week. He is excited to get back at it.

So much love and hoping you all had a great holiday season!

Jess and Matt