God Jul og et Godt Nytt år
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
We’d like to wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our family and friends. We’ve had a wonderful year in Oslo, traveling and enjoying our many visitors.
Oslo continues to be a wonderful place for us to live. Despite our best efforts, the Norwegian lessons haven’t caught on and we still use English almost exclusively. Our English church and the well-educated Norwegian public make it a non-issue. Jean has gotten involved in the expat community and has made good friends while playing Mahjong, knitting, and sewing. Lucas continues to enjoy his work and co-workers. We started cross country skiing in January; and though Lucas takes to it more than Jean, we both hope to ski more this winter.
The rest of our free time we spend exploring Oslo and planning our travels. We’ve been blessed to have many visitors this year, most of which we’ve been able show Oslo to before travelling on to other European locations with them. We started off the New Year in Spain with Lucas’ sister Erica and her husband Jud. Then Jean went to Paris with a friend from Houston before we joined Lucas’ brother Matt and his wife Renee in Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro.
We then took an early anniversary trip to Greece over Easter which included a cruise through the Greek isles with a stop in Turkey. Afterward, Jean’s sister Sarah came to Norway and then they meet up with a friend of Sarah’s in Prague and Vienna before meeting Lucas in Budapest. We spent much of the summer traveling around Norway with Jean’s aunts and uncle and other friends / visitors. Jean’s parent came in June and she joined them in London before we all toured Scotland together.
We finished up the summer taking weekend trips to each of the Scandinavian capitals before joining Lucas’ parent for a trip to Russia. It was a whirlwind year of travel and to top it off we took a weeklong trip to Kenya in November where we took a safari.
As the year comes to a close, we can’t help but reflect on how blessed we are to have had such opportunities. The project Lucas is working on is moving along and he plans to see it finished sometime after we return to Houston on March 1st. We look forward to the chance to reconnect with our all friends and get Peanut back. If you’d like to see more pictures or hear more about our travels you can go to our blog at: http://ljhilliard.blogspot.com/.
God’s Blessings and Merry Christmas!
Lucas and Jean Hilliard
MESSEPROMENADEN 7
Flat H0902
0279 Oslo, Norway
On our return to Houston in March:
3306 Garden Crest Ln
Houston, TX 77018
