Happy Holidays 2008!

If you've been following our blog this year, this post won't really contain anything new. But for those of you we don't regularly correspond with, we hope you're doing great and that you tune in to our blog occasionally to see what we're up to. We'd love to hear from all of you too!

In January we finally got our long-awaited paperwork to move to England! We had been waiting since March of 2007, and we were excited and grateful to finally know we'd be moving in February.

Before we left we made an extra-special

trip to Alaska to visit Rachel's parents and brother. Things were excessively cold--down to negative 45 degrees F! We had a wonderful time doing things you can only do in Alaska in the winter: seeing the aurora borealis, watching the dog sled races, seeing the massive and elaborate ice sculptures, taking a dip in the hot springs and watching our eyelashes turn frosty. And it was great to see family!

We moved to England in February and have absolutely LOVED living in this fabulous country! We've seen so many wonderful and iconic sites: Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Stonehenge, Shakespeare's birthplace, etc. And we've enjoyed the food and culture. So far we've taken trips to Paris, Scotland, Germany, Normandy, Prague, Portugal, etc. We're having the time of our lives!

In May Jacob's brother Joel and his wife Emily visited. We had a really fun time together doing lots of fun England things. We also took a trip to Scotland, which was amazing! Emily and Joel were wonderful guests!

Jacob spent 2 months in Iraq over the summer. He had an interesting time, but the separation was difficult. Rachel had a fabulous time with her brother Nick while Jacob was gone. Rachel and Nick visited Germany, France, Ireland and many awesome places in England: Liverpool and the Beatles sites, the Isle of Wight, Bath, York, Sandringham House, countless castles and stately mansions and more local--but fabulous--places like Cambridge, Ipswich and London.

Jacob spent 3 weeks working on audits in Turkey in October & November. He had a good time visiting Biblically significant sites and other fun Turkish places. He even learned some Turkish dancing techniques while he was there. :)

We spent our Thanksgiving in Portugal, but we still got our turkey dinner with Jacob's amazing coworkers a few days before we left. He enjoys the people he works with in this office, and we love hanging out with them. Rachel is still working remotely for the credit union back in Albuquerque. She still loves her job but misses her coworkers.

The weekend before Christmas we decided to visit the Christmas markets in Germany, which were amazing! For Christmas we plan to have a quiet, relaxing day at home and dinner with friends.

We hope you all have a wonderful holiday season!

Love,

Rachel and Jacob