Merry Christmas From Tallinn

I can't believe we are spending our last Christmas in Tallinn (and that I have still not managed to get a white Christmas out of this tour, since last year we were gone at Christmas and that is the only one of the three with snow!).

I will be sad to leave Estonia in about 7 months. This place is amazing, and I will always love it here.

And as much as I missed my family this year, I am glad to have spent Christmas with some of the amazing folks we have met here.

Christmas Eve was spent at one friend's house, with I think everyone from the embassy who is in town showing up at least for a bit.

And then yesterday, after a pancake breakfast courtesy of my awesome wife and lots of fun unwrapping the presents with the pets (seriously, the dog "helped" me unwrap my "Dog Shaming" calendar...how perfect is that!), we went and had dinner at another friend's house, together with her husband and four kids, another friend, her husband and child, and one more friend. It looked A LOT like Christmases with my big Catholic family!

Which made me a little more and a little less homesick.

The amazing thing about the Foreign Service is that while you don't lose your family of origin, you can a new, wonderful, large family of fellow Foreign Service folks. And we really come together as a family when we can't be home with our family of origin.

It is moments like these that I am certain keep me in the Foreign Service even when I would rather be home.

So Merry Christmas to you, my friends, family and Foreign Service family, where ever you are, from me, my wife and the pets.And may you have the most blessed of New Years.