My Christmas Friend

I have been blessed with many wonderful friends in my life so far and all of them have helped me become the person I am today. I am grateful for my childhood buddies and the memories of eating chilly willies and singing Celine Dion songs. I am grateful for my high school friends who I learned how to drive with and spent weekends singing and dancing to our favorite music. I love my college friends who became my sisters and now I am thankful for the friends who are with me as my children grow up. There is one friend that I would like to highlight tonight and I am going to affectionately call her my Christmas friend.

Ana and I became friends our sophomore year of college when we roomed together during our semester studying abroad in Austria. We didnt really know each other at the beginning of the semester and we were both really nervous about the situation. but like always, God knew what He was doing when He put us together. We soon became best friends, sharing and doing everything together. We both started our days with our favorite granola cereal with milk and honey and a big cup of coffee. We looked forward to our cup of raspberry tea in the afternoon and would then sometimes end our days with a nice glass of wine or maybe some nutella and then say our bedtime prayers together. (* I wanted to post some actual Austria pics, but I couldn't get the scanner to work... oh well! )

Ana is my Christmas friend because she is, well in love with Christmas and all of the joy that goes along with it. I will never forget walking into our dorm room one day in the middle of October and she was listening to Amy Grant Christmas. As Christmas grew closer during that semester we took part in any festive activity we could, from baking apple pies, playing in the snow, singing Christmas carols, watching Christmas movies, throwing Christmas parties with our dear friends and having an illegal Christmas tree in our room, fully decorated of course. I will always remember one afternoon we both decided to take a nap and we woke up to the sound of Christmas music playing outside our window by a group of Austrians and their wonderful instruments. It was amazing. Life was good.

Oh I should also mention that Ana is also the person who introduced me to my husband. Yep, God definitely knew what he was doing when he put us together. :) While we were in Austria Ana mentioned a few times her good friend Dan and when we returned to the States I met and well, the rest is history!

Every year when Advent comes around I will always think of Ana and how grateful I am for her friendship and for her love of Christmas! I pray that one day our daughters will find wonderful friends like we did, and who knows maybe they will find each other in Gaming! :)