Old Friends and Chosen Family

Jan and I have lived in Sweden a long time. We arrived here, and met each other, in 1979.  In her first year here Jan worked with S, a librarian. S, originally from Scotland, had been here a good bit longer, was married to a Swede and had two young children, both girls. Jan taught Rona, the older girl who was 7 years old, English every week. At the end of hat first year Jan moved up to Östersund to where I was living, but we stayed in contact with Sine and her family and now, 42 years later we are all still friends.
In the picture today you can see Jan, S, and Rona, who is now in her late forties, with two children of her own! Here's a picture of the 2 boys, and Rona's husband and me, taken on a visit here in 2014. Here's another picture, of Rona and her sons on the same trip.
In today's picture Rona is talking about the greenhouse, built by her and her husband. It was inspired by a visit to us when we took her to our friend Ann, who has an even larger greenhouse!
We have so much history together, so many interweaving stories, which I have just touched upon here. We are certainly good friends but it goes deeper than that, probably because our families live in another part of the world. We are all part of what Jan and I call “chosen family”.